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The chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) said today that they are ready to re-arrest nearly 2,000 convicts released under the auspices of a controversial 2013 good conduct law that has been temporarily suspended due to public outcry.
PNP chief Oscar Albayalde’s remarks come three days after presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said the convicts need to be returned to prison because they committed “heinous crimes,” a category the law under which they were released, Republic Act No. 10592 (aka Good Conduct Time Allowance or GCTA), explicitly excludes.
“The PNP is ready to field tracker teams to assist the Bureau of Corrections in accounting for national prisoners released thru Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) if it will be necessary to recall these convicts,” Albayalde said at a press conference today.
“These persons were convicted by the court to serve prison sentences for their crime. Should there be any nullification or invalidation of their early release from prison, these convicts will be treated as fugitives from justice, thus warrantless arrest is applicable.”
Read: Men linked to Chiong sisters’ rape-murder walked free, corrections chief confirms
But are these men “fugitives from justice” when the justice system has let them go?
Section 5, Rule 113 of the Revised Rules on Criminal Procedure says there are only three instances in which police can arrest a person without a warrant: when they have committed, are in the act of committing, or about to commit a crime; if they have just committed a crime and there’s probable cause they committed it; and when a prisoner has escaped from prison.
The GCTA law has attracted public scrutiny since the near-release of former Calauan Mayor Antonio Sanchez, the man convicted in 1993 of torturing and murdering college students Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez. The former mayor’s early release was said to have been blocked by President Rodrigo Duterte due to the severity of the crime Sanchez committed.
Today, Bureau of Corrections chief Nicanor Faeldon admitted in a Senate hearing that the convicts behind the 1997 rape-murder of sisters Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong have already been freed, prompting netizens to call for his resignation. However, Faeldon said that he won’t resign from his post and that he believes he is doing his a good job despite the ongoing controversy.
