Inmates run to SC to challenge revised rules of GCTA law

Inmates at the New Bilibid Prison have brought the first known legal challenge to several provisions of the revised Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the law awarding increased good conduct time allowances (GCTA) to prisoners.

Eight inmates asked the Supreme Court (SC) to declare invalid the recently introduced rules disqualifying persons charged with heinous crimes from earning time allowances for good conduct, study, teaching and mentoring, and loyalty for "going beyond the law and for being tantamount to executive legislation."

Eight Bilibid inmates lead by Russel Fuensalida file a petition before the Supreme Court questioning the legality and constitutionality of the Revised IRR of the Expanded GCTA Law (RA 10592). @gmanews pic.twitter.com/Y2zNuZr7hl

— Cecille Villarosa (@CecilVillarosa) September 29, 2019

They said the revised IRR of Republic Act No. 10592, signed on September 16 after a 10-day review by the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, was issued with grave abuse of discretion. 

The revised IRR explicitly excludes recidivists, habitual delinquents, escapees, and those charged with heinous crimes from earning any kind of time allowance.

The inmates also want the SC to nullify the rule, saying that a disqualified person deprived of liberty (PDL) who was imprisoned before RA 10592 took effect in 2013 should be entitled to time allowances they had already accrued under the Revised Penal Code.

RA 10592 amended provisions of the decades-old Revised Penal Code on time allowances and credit for preventive imprisonment (CPI).

The petitioners said the prohibition on disqualified inmates who were placed behind bars after 2013 from earning any kind of time allowance or CPI likewise goes beyond the law, amounts to executive legislation, and violates the equal protection clause under the Constitution.

Authorities reviewed the IRR after issues on its implementation were brought to public attention following reports of the possibility of early release for Antonio Sanchez, a former mayor convicted of rape and murder, because his sentence was shortened by GCTAs.

The exclusion of persons charged with heinous crimes from earning time allowances formalizes the position that the government was quick to take in response to Sanchez's GCTA case, the processing of which Malacañang specifically ordered to be put on hold amid the ensuing public outcry.

Sanchez's case led to revelations that a number of convicts in other high-profile cases have already been freed on reduced prison terms, a temporary suspension of GCTA processing for thousands of inmates, a review of the IRR, and a Senate hearing on anomalies in the Bureau of Corrections.

"Regrettably, all these public outrage and media attention have contributed to the actions undertaken by herein respondents," the petitioner-inmates said, referring to Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año, new BuCor chief Gerald Bantag, and Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) chief Allan Iral.

"Ultimately, herein petitioners and those who are similarly situated are the ones who are suffering and are continuing to suffer. Unless these issues befitting our country are clarified by judicial pronouncement of no less than the Supreme Court, they shall continue to suffer from it," they said.

The inmates asked the high court to order the BuCor and BJMP not to retroactively apply the exclusions introduced by the revised IRR "insofar as the provisions are disadvantageous to any prisoners."

They also want prison authorities to be ordered to recompute the time allowances due them and other similarly situated prisoners "with reasonable dispatch" and to release them if they would be found to have fully served their sentence.

Guevarra previously said the government will welcome any legal challenge to its interpretation of RA 10592.

The GCTA controversy has also led to President Rodrigo Duterte ordering nearly 2,000 convicts of heinous crimes who were released in the last five years to surrender or be hunted down by police.

The 1,914 convicts were allegedly released in connection with GCTAs based on an application of RA 10592 to all convicted prisoners without exceptions.

The deadline for them to surrender has passed, but arrests of those who failed to turn themselves in were put on hold as authorities clean up the original BuCor list of releases that turned out to be riddled with errors.

The number of surrenderers rose to more than 2,000, exceeding the expected figure because even former prisoners released on non-GCTA related grounds also turned themselves in.

Prison authorities have started releasing those whom they said should not have surrendered. —KBK, GMA News