E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Unlocking the detention dilemma
Sunday, 10 21, 2007
The government wants him to languish in jail, but then it had better watch out for the whiplash of a populace that has become increasingly restive at the thought of seeing behind bars the only leader they recognize. Every solution to appease the people has been tried: hospital arrest; house arrest; furlough; pass; medical leave, etcetera. Now that he has been convicted, an imprisoned President Joseph Estrada stands as a persistent pain in Gloria’s derrière. One false move to mistreat him, and the fury of Estrada’s supporters could be unleashed — just like in May 2001.
Estrada is reported to be filing a motion requesting that he be allowed to stay at his residence in Polk Street in San Juan City — a house arrest of sorts — for him to have an easier access to his ailing mother.
State Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio has stated that the prosecution is not likely to oppose such request, except maybe for security concerns, taking into account that Polk Street is a private place yet very accessible to the public. Declining, however, to call it a furlough or a house arrest — since that mode might be construed as a special consideration for the ousted president — Villa-Ignacio said “pass” would be a more appropriate term.
On the other hand, Malacañang said it would not object to any motion that Estrada may file with the Sandiganbayan, and would just as soon leave it to that judicial body to determine the legality and propriety of such motion.
Whatever it is — a pass, a furlough, a house arrest, a hospital arrest, or whatever one may want to call it — any such request of Estrada before the Sandiganbayan that would take him out of the confines of his Tanay jailhouse should be granted, if only to put to rest this tug-of-war on how to incarcerate the convicted president.
“Imprisonment” simply means “the detention of a person contrary to his will... The restraint on a person’s personal liberty; coercion exercised upon a person to prevent the free exercise of his powers of locomotion.” Case law abounds with rulings that “it is not a necessary part of the definition that the confinement should be in a place appropriated for that purpose; it may be in a locality used only for the specific occasion; or it may take place without the actual application of any physical agencies of restraints (such as locks or bars), as by verbal compulsion and the display of available force. Every confinement of a person is an ‘imprisonment,’ whether it be in a prison, or in a private house, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets.”
It is on these grounds that the Sandiganbayan allowed Estrada to be detained at his own resthouse in Tanay pending the trial of his plunder case, and earlier in Taguig City, then Laguna and later on at the Veterans Hospital. So, I don’t see any reason now for the Sandiganbayan to turn down his motion to stay at his San Juan residence pending the resolution of his motion for reconsideration (MR) on the judgment in his plunder case. For as long as the purpose of imprisonment is attained, i.e., restrictions on the liberty of movement of an individual, then Estrada can be placed anywhere. This may even entail lesser expenses for the government, as compared to allowing him to go on short visits to San Juan which require deployment of a whole contingent of the police to assure his safety or prevent him from making a bolt for freedom.
With more reason, he should be allowed now for humanitarian considerations, as there is evidently a basis for the filial anxiety of Estrada to be with his mother, whose mortality now merely hangs on life-support systems.
The Sandiganbayan should take cognizance of the United Nations Minimum Rules for Non-Custodial Measures, or the Tokyo Rules, adopted by the UN General Assembly under Resolution 45/110.
Under the Tokyo Rules, non-custodial measures are allowed — with due regard to the personality and background of the offender and the protection of society — to avoid unnecessary use of (actual) imprisonment. This class of detention includes conditional discharge, economic sanctions and monetary penalties, house arrest, furlough and halfway houses, and other modes of non-institutional disposition. Simply, it takes out the convict, or prisoner, out of the confines of a prison or government detention facility, and allows him to serve his sentence or suffer detention elsewhere.
On previous occasions, the Sandiganbayan had allowed Estrada to be detained elsewhere other than at the Quezon City Jail where the accused before the Sandiganbayan are normally detained; allowed him to attend a legislative investigation; permitted him many times to visit his ailing mother; and even allowed him to go to Hong Kong for surgery on his bad knee. All these are in the nature of non-custodial detention recognized under the Tokyo Rules.
The Tokyo Rules apply to the Philippines. Applying them to the case of Estrada — that is, allowing him to stay rooted at Polk Street while he awaits the decision on his MR — should put to rest the dilemma of the Sandiganbayan. No local law or rules on imprisonment are being violated here. Neither will the equal protection of the laws clause of the Constitution be imperiled, there being a reasonable classification (of Estrada) which rests on a substantial distinction and the special circumstances surrounding the case.
A dynamic and enlightened application of the Tokyo Rules would also deliver the government out of its quandary over how to treat Estrada after his conviction.
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