Kneejerk reactions

With the furor over the releases of lifetime prisoners on the

Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) Law said to be helped along with bribery and corruption in the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), President Duterte has demanded the freed prisoners to return to their prison cells in 15 days, under a shoot-to-kill order.

This return order, however, can be challenged in the Supreme Court by any family member of a freed prisoner — which should include the Justice Secretary’s thin “judicial excuse” to justify the implementation of the Duterte return order using a decades-old High Court ruling remanding the freed prisoners to return to their cells — mainly because the issue today is not based on the old law ruled decades ago by the Supreme Court (SC), but the new GCTA Law.

If challenged before the High Court, it should make a ruling on the basis of the present GCTA Law — not on the President’s order and not his Justice chief’s justification.

If the SC rules in favor of the administration, then fine; what the SC rules is the law, right or wrong. But the decision should not be left to the Executive branch of government.

A better move would be for the Justice chief to first check on all the released prisoners’ records and figure out whether some are truly deserving of release under the rules of the GCTA Law. Some of these released prisoners may even deserve to be freed, of course, under its rules.

But definitely, until such a thorough investigation is made and not based on the probe of the Senate, which tends to portray guilt even when not proved, some of these released prisoners do not deserve to return to prison should it be found that they served their time and with good conduct thrown in.

Ironically, it was the very same senators today who are bitching about the “lenient” time allowances granted who were the very ones who authored and co-authored the GCTA Law as it stands today, which they now want amended.

Gee, don’t these senators ever read bills, but simply sign on as “co-authors” of measures introduced, mostly to have a “good” legislative record”? It has become quite obvious that they just affix their signatures without reading or understanding the bill they agreed to make into law.

But today, as the issue rests on the release by the BuCor officials, allegedly due to payoffs and bribes given by family members, there went a senator who is a co-author of the GCTA Law, now raising the issue of restoring the death penalty for criminals who have committed heinous crimes.

Just what good will a measure restoring the death penalty do? If won’t get the convicted rapist and murderer Antonio Sanchez and others who had been convicted of heinous crimes as candidates of the death penalty if the law is revived.

Besides, if the death penalty is restored by the Senate and the House of Representatives, it will certainly take years for the SC to hand that criminal a final conviction, and by that time, anywhere between 10 to 15 years at the earliest — a new president — hopefully a duly elected one and not a usurper — may seek the reversal of capital punishment.

This has been the history of capital punishment in this country, with the changes of government through the years.

It will be recalled that during the reign of Cory Aquino, she and her drafters of the Cory Constitution lifted capital punishment, which was imposed by her predecessor, then President Ferdinand Marcos.

However, the same 1987 Cory Constitution also included the right of Congress to revive the death penalty, which provision is still in existence.

Then President Ramos called for the return of the death penalty and the pliant Congress quickly reintroduced the death penalty, and if memory serves, even carnapping fell under the death penalty,

Then came President Arroyo who did away with the death penalty, but which is again being considered by Duterte and, of course, his pliant Congress.

Duterte has less than three years to his term, and there is serious doubt that any prisoner convicted of heinous crimes during his term and after Congress passes the restoration of death penalty will finally be condemned to death by the High Court, as terms would be commuted — unless of course, the presidential shoot-to-kill order for the present released prisoners is not only obeyed by authorities, but also included in the death penalty bill the senators want rushed.

The trouble with senators and congressmen is that their reaction to such issues is always a knee-jerk reaction. All they really want is to score media points.

“There is serious doubt that any prisoner convicted of heinous crimes during his term and af ter Congress passes the restoration of death penalty will finally be condemned to death by the High Court.

“If challenged before the High Court, it should make a ruling on the basis of the present GCTA Law — not on the President’s order and not his Justice chief ’s justification.