Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso is a Filipino woman who was arrested and sentenced to death for smuggling heroin into Indonesia. Her case, among others, sparked international attention towards Indonesia's capital punishment and drug prohibition laws.
Background
Veloso was born in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija. She is the youngest of five siblings.[3] She dropped out in her first year of high school.[4][5][6] She and her husband married when she was around 17 years old but they later separated. They have two sons.[7] Prior to her arrest, in 2009, Veloso worked in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates for about six months. Her father said that she left her job because her employer attempted to rape her.[8] She returned to her hometown and started a business peddling plastic containers, which unfortunately failed.[6]
Conviction
Veloso was arrested in Indonesia in April 2010 for smuggling 2.6 kilograms (5.7 lb) of heroin in a suitcase.[9] Throughout her trial, she maintained her innocence, claiming that she was duped into carrying the suitcase by her recruiter, a godsister of hers named Maria Kristina Sergio, who convinced her to go to Indonesia after losing a job in Malaysia.[10][11][6] Her Indonesian lawyer, Agus Salim,[12] noted that she neither had a lawyer nor a Tagalog translator during her interrogation; and that during her sentencing, although she was represented by a public defender, her courtroom interpreter was not a licensed professional.[4]
Veloso was sentenced to death by the presiding judge in October 2010 in Yogyakarta's Sleman District Court, despite the prosecutor's verdict of a life sentence.[4] Nevertheless, she was spared due to a moratorium on capital punishment enacted by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. She was once again scheduled to be executed in January 2015 after the election of Joko Widodo as President of Indonesia.[13]
At midnight of 29 April 2015, however, Veloso was granted a stay of execution so that she could act as a witness for the trial of her alleged human trafficker.[15] News of the reprieve came so close to the scheduled time of her execution such that several news outlets reported preemptively that it occurred. The front-page headline on one newspaper read "Death Came Before Dawn".[16] She was reprieved after reports that her trafficker had surrendered to the police, which prompted Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to appeal for clemency on the basis that her testimony could be invaluable in the prosecuting her alleged recruiter.[17] Veloso's alleged trafficker Maria Kristina Sergio, along with Sergio's live-in partner Julius Lacanilao and an African national tentatively identified as "Ike", will face charges of human trafficking, illegal recruiting and estafa (fraud).[18] Her mother believes Veloso was spared by a 'miracle';[19] the other eight prisoners scheduled for execution alongside her were executed by firing squad early on the morning of 29 April.[20]
Veloso was still awaiting execution in her Indonesian prison cell on 19 June 2017.[24] In August 2016, motions were heard to depose her testimony regarding the human trafficking charges against Maria Kristina Sergio and Julius Lacanilao. The motion was granted, but no time was set for when the deposition was to occur. Judge Reyes denied a defense motion in November to block the deposition, stating she found no compelling reason to reverse her decision.[25] On 13 February 2017, the Hon. Anarica J. Castillo-Reyes affirmed the motion to take Veloso's deposition. The resolution scheduled the deposition to be done on 27 April 2017.[26] The Court of Appeals ordered a temporary restraining order on 24 March, preventing the prosecutor from interviewing Veloso.[27] Associate Justice Ramon M. Bato Jr., on behalf of the Court of Appeals, issued a proclamation on 22 May finding in favor of the defense motion that disallowed taking Veloso's deposition, because it was claiming that it violated the plaintiffs' right to face their accuser.[28]
On 16 June 2017, the Veloso family filed a motion for reconsideration through the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers (NUPL), asking the Court of Appeals to rescind the order preventing the prosecutor from deposing Veloso at the Yogyakarta prison. The family's argument for the motion was that Veloso may run out of time and be executed before she could testify. The motion stated, "No damage can be irreparable as what Mary Jane stands to suffer — to be muzzled before she is silenced forever, to die without ever being heard.”[24] The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) also requested the Court of Appeals to reconsider their ruling.[29][30] The appeals court later affirmed their decision on 5 June 2018 through Bato, dismissing the motion filed by the OSG.[31]
On 3 September 2018, the Veloso family, along with their lawyers from the NUPL, took the case to the Philippine's highest court, the Supreme Court of the Philippines, in an attempt to overturn the decision made by the Court of Appeals.[32] In January 2019, rumors that Veloso had been executed spread, which were denied by both Indonesia's Attorney General's Office and her lawyer.[12] After more than a year, on 9 October 2019, the Supreme Court granted the petition and reversed the Court of Appeals' decision preventing Veloso's deposition, stating that "to disallow the written interrogatories will curtail Mary Jane's right to due process".[33] After a denied motion filed by lawyers from the Public Attorney's Office representing Sergio and Lacanilao, the Supreme Court reaffirmed their 2019 decision in a resolution dated 14 August 2020.[34][35] Preparations for her testimony have begun, but a final date is yet to be set due to logistics issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had affected both the Philippines and Indonesia.[36][37]
On 10 March 2021, Veloso was moved from Wirogunan II A women's prison to Wonosari II B women's prison in Gunung Kidul Regency, Yogyakarta, where she continued to earn money to send for her family by making batik cloth, with each sheet selling for between Rp. 600.000,- and several million Rupiah.[38]
The petition for her release at Change.org was the fastest-growing petition from the Philippines ever and gained over 250,000 signatories from over 125 countries.[48] On 27 April 2015, during the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, representatives from the ASEAN Youth Forum met with Widodo in an attempt to save Veloso's life.[49]
^Navarro, Louie (29 April 2015). "Veloso's execution suspended". CNN Philippines. CNN Philippines, Reuters. Archived from the original on 10 June 2015. Retrieved 29 April 2015.
^Staff Writers (12 November 2016). "Court allows Veloso Deposition". The Philippine Daily Inquirer. Inquirer.net. Archived from the original on 29 June 2017. Retrieved 29 June 2017.
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