"By dobbing some other **** I'm not killing my family. And what's the point anyway, because if we dob them in, right, we dob them in, they kill our family and then we're dead anyway. So, you know, why... Don't tell them and they'll just kill us instead and leave our families alone."
— Renae Lawrence, quoted on ABC TV's 7.30 Report, April 2005.
Adnan Wirawan, Stephens' Lawyer, claimed that his client has been unfairly accused as the ring leader of the alleged conspiracy. "He's a human suitcase... he was being told what to do." During legal proceedings, Czugaj and Rush, fellow members of the Bali Nine who have since been convicted of drug trafficking, testified that they had never met Stephens or Lawrence until they were all arrested on 17 April 2005.
On 20 December 2006, Stephens announced he planned to marry Christine Winarni Puspayanti, an Indonesian woman he met at Kerobokan Prison. Stephens met Puspayanti months after his arrest while she was visiting the prison as a part of a church group; and they married in a traditional Indonesian-style wedding in April 2011.
In 2014 Stephens and Nguyen were transferred to a prison in Malang, East Java when it was reported that they had violated prison rules.
