Republic Act 10592 which expanded the application of good conduct time allowance for prisoners even during preventive imprisonment and increased the number of days that may be credited for good conduct i effect increases the periods for good conduct time allowance.
The law also allowed additional deduction of 15 days for each month of study, teaching or mentoring service while it expanded the special time allowance for loyalty and applied it to preventive imprisonment.
It is the application of this law that would allow convicted rapist and murderer ex-Calauan mayor Antonio Sanchez to likely walk free in 2 months as confirmed Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director General Nicanor Faeldon.
In June this year, the Supreme Court, in a decision penned by Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta, unanimously voted to allow retroactive application of the law as it benefits detention and convicted prisoners.
Guevarra said application of the law will not only benefit Sanchez, but thousands of other PDL.
Although Sanchez was sentenced to 7 counts of reclusion perpetua, he stands to benefit from the 3-fold rule under the Revised Penal Code, which limits the service of sentence to a maximum of 3 times the harshest penalty but in no case more than 40 years.
The Revised Penal Code also allows the application of good conduct time allowances, which reduces the years and days spent in prison.
The question is, is it right to free hardened convicted criminals like Sanchez because of the retroactive application of the law?
Around 11,000 convicts are bound to benefit from the retroactive application of the law but it is different when the name of Sanchez is involved.
BuCor is recomputing the good conduct time allowances of Sanchez, who was sentenced in 1995 to 7 counts of reclusion perpetua (or 40 years imprisonment) over the murder of University of the Philippines Los Baños students Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez in June 1993. Sarmenta was also found raped. Sanchez is “very likely for release” soon, about 25 years after he was arrested for the gruesome crimes.
Sanchez’s case need to be reviewed before the law is applied to his favor.
Given the nature of the crimes he was found guilty of, it is only right that with the Sanchez case being very significant in jurisprudence, Sanchez’s case being benefited by the application of the law must be carefully reviewed.
