The Sanggau district court in West Kalimantan found Fidelis Arie Sudewarto guilty of growing marijuana without permission and sentenced him to eight months in prison on 2 August 2017.[1][2] The 34-year-old civil servant had grown the plants to treat his wife Yeni Riawati, who suffered from syringomyelia, a rare disorder in which a cyst forms within the spinal cord.[1]
Not a dealer, not a user, still convicted
The judges accepted in their reasoning that Sudewarto was not involved in drug trafficking: his lawyer Marcelina Lin said the court acknowledged he was neither a dealer nor even a user, and multiple drug tests proved he consumed nothing.[1] Pro-cannabis groups made the same point after the verdict, noting he grew only for his wife and supplied nobody else, but the court ruled he had no permit to cultivate cannabis.[1][2] Prosecutors had sought five months; the court imposed eight, plus a fine of 1 billion rupiah (about US$75,000), with one additional month in jail in default.[1][2]
A treatment that stopped at arrest
Sudewarto told the court he began growing after reading online that marijuana could ease his wife’s pain, knowing it broke the law, and Lin said Riawati began to feel better as a spinal wound started to heal.[1] The local narcotics agency arrested him in February 2017, cutting off her supply, and Riawati died a month after his arrest while he remained locked up.[1][2]