Roxas: GCTA’s implementing rules exclude inmates charged with heinous crimes

Former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas denied he failed to exclude convicts of heinous crimes from benefiting from the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) law, saying that the law's existing implementing rules and regulations (IRR) already specify their exemption.

Roxas cited Rule 4, Section 6 of GCTA’s IRR on Provisional Release While Under Preventive Imprisonment, which reads that:

“Whenever an accused has undergone preventive imprisonment for a period equal to the imposable maximum imprisonment of the offense charged to which he may be sentenced and his case is not yet decided, he shall be released immediately without prejudice to the continuation of the trial thereof or the proceeding on appeal, if the same is under review, except for the following:

1. Recidivist

2. Habitual Delinquent

3. Escapee

4. Person charged with heinous crimes.”

This provision, Roxas said, is also stated under Article 29, Paragraph 4 of the Revised Penal Code.

“What is clear then, is that the disqualifications about which you have inquired are all in the IRR. All four disqualifications were included in the rules, and none of them are missing as alleged as many commentators in recent days,” Roxas said in his letter to Ombudsman Samuel Martires dated and received by Martires’ office on September 18.

“They are there for everyone to see and for the concerned officers of the government to observe,” Roxas added.

The GCTA law has been under intense scrutiny after it was reported that convicted rapist and killer, former Calauan Laguna Mayor Antonio Sanchez, will be soon freed from jail due to the GCTA law.

Sanchez is convicted of seven counts of rape and seven counts of homicide over the rape and killing of Eileen Sarmenta and death of Allan Gomez, both UP Los Baños students, in 1993.

Since the controversy, the Justice department and its attached agencies have already revised the GCTA law’s IRR to explicitly exclude convicts of heinous crimes. — BM, GMA News