The plight of Antony de Malmanche, the man who’s in jail in Bali arrested for drug trafficking.

It’s impossible to know the circumstances around his situation but if you listen to those who know him and love him, they’re floored by this. He was chasing love apparently, naively. He’s had some rotten luck in his life and it seems inadvertently he may have become a drug mule.

It’s alleged he was carrying 1.75 kilograms of methamphetamine - a significant amount. As his immediate family said, he is a law-abiding man. He was going to meet a woman in Hong Kong called Jessie. They don't know why he then travelled on to Bali.

Anyway, he’s now in a dreadful situation - a real mess. If he’s found guilty he could face death by firing squad.

John Key said he would make it clear to the Indonesian president that New Zealand doesn’t support the death penalty but he says he can’t do much at the moment and he’ll just have to see how it plays out. He’s being careful, diplomatically, and he really has to at this stage. But surely our government would do everything in its power to stop the death penalty being carried out.

If Antony de Malmanche was a Briton or a Canadian, then both of those countries would place enormous pressure on Jakarta to pardon one of their citizens from the death sentence. We should do the same.

Capital punishment is not part of our legal system and I don't think it should be part of any country's legal system. There are so many reasons to oppose it. I won’t go into those now, but if de Malmanche is found guilty then I would like to think our government would do all it could to spare his life.

On the face of it, Antony de Malmanche seems to have made a catastrophic error and it serves as a tragic reminder that love, or the promise of it, is an emotion that can turn so many good folk into fools.