Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes, the former chief of staff of former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and a co-accused in the multi-million peso “Napoles pork barrel scam” had stayed in pre-trial detention for 6 years, 7 months, and counting.
UPDATE: The next part is now available here.
She petitioned the Philippine Supreme Court to release her from detention due to “violations of her right to due process” and to “speedy, impartial and public trial.”
Powers That Be
Gigi Reyes also claims that others more powerful than her, such as Senators Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, and Bong Revilla, who also played critical roles in the scam, had already been released — either through bail or acquittal.
She also claims that she had been suffering from multiple health problems that were caused or aggravated by her incarceration in the dilapidated overcongested jail facilities.
529 Days Before Action
Gigi Reyes’ case is a tragic example of the prolonged pretrial detention in the Philippines.
Data from my empirical study of six Metro Manila Jails suggests that persons deprived of liberties (PDLs) who are still presumed innocent, and in the process of determining guilt or innocence, stay in detention for an average of 529 days before their cases are decided upon.
The data further suggests that the top 20 percent of the cases register an average stay of 5 years or more.
Indeed, there are a number of PDLs who had stayed in detention for more than 15 years, only to be found innocent of the charges filed against them.
Supreme Court from gmanetwork.com
Dynamics Of Justice System
Prolonged pretrial detention has perverted the processes and dynamics of the Philippine Criminal Justice System.
It has made denial or grant of bail the most important decision point, more important than findings of guilt or innocence.
In the Philippines, the Constitution mandates that bail is a matter of right except for those charged with capital offenses and when the evidence of guilt is strong.
Thus, accused who are charged with capital offenses are automatically held in detention as “non-bailable” and a petition for bail hearing has to take place in order to determine whether the evidence of guilt is weak or strong.
Based on the same study of the six jails, on average, bail hearings takes at least 120 days, and in some cases can drag up to 3 to 6 years.
Piecemeal Hearings
Our experiences in the Community Bail Bond program also suggest that defense lawyers usually do not invoke the petition for bail as it “only prolongs the case” and it is “almost futile” since most of the indigent accused cannot post the amount of bail should their bail petition be even granted.
More harrowingly, when the accused is denied bail and undergoes the full length of the trial proceedings, the key problem is the postponement of the piecemeal hearings.
In separate analysis of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) Alpha List of PDLs, hearings come once every 2 to 3 months, only to be postponed.
Never-Tried Convicts
In one full year, PDLs can have 4 to 6 hearings scheduled, with only 1 or 2 hearings pushed through.
This is especially true for drug cases.
Thus, after languishing in jail for 2 to 3 years, most PDLs simply plead guilty to a lower offense in order to be released.
Thus, they are transformed “from prisoners that were never convicted, to convicts that were never tried.”
What a sorry state, indeed.
Inadvertent Delays
My continuing research among criminal justice actors show that reasons from postponement can be grouped into three main categories: structural, organizational and cultural.
Postponements based on structural reasons include: lack of equipment (say, lack of computers and internet access for online hearings), lack of jail personnel to bring PDLs to court, lack of judges, prosecutors and lawyers, and other vacancies in offices, and lack of resources in general.
In my study, structural postponements lead to “inadvertent delays.”
Organizational reasons of postponements include failure of coordination among agencies, such as police and jail officers not able to receive notice of hearings from the court, courts overscheduling of hearings in a day, that is, scheduling more than 20 hearings in a day, which naturally leads to the “lack of material time” for the other accused, and many other lapses in managing the court and jail dockets.
Organization postponements lead to “unnecessary delays.”
Money In Postponements
Cultural reasons of postponements are the most pernicious: they are part and parcel of the litigators’ techniques to win a case, generate income, and indirectly and informally punish the accused.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers ask for postponements to wear out the witnesses of the other party — waiting for the witnesses to move out of the country, die, or simply get disinterested.
Additionally, in the Philippines, lawyers make money per “appearance” regardless of whether a hearing is pushed through or postponed.
Thus, there are very limited incentives for the speedy disposition of cases.
Money In Postponements
Cultural reasons of postponements are the most pernicious: they are part and parcel of the litigators’ techniques to win a case, generate income, and indirectly and informally punish the accused.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers ask for postponements to wear out the witnesses of the other party — waiting for the witnesses to move out of the country, die, or simply get disinterested.
Additionally, in the Philippines, lawyers make money per “appearance” regardless of whether a hearing is pushed through or postponed.
Thus, there are very limited incentives for the speedy disposition of cases.
(Note: Part 2 will be posted on Monday, January 25.)