Among the personalities in the pork barrel scam saga that started in 2013, none has suffered the most than lawyer Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes who spent nine years in jail before her acquittal by the Sandiganbayan.
Last Friday, Reyes, along with Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile and businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles, were found not guilty in the P172-million plunder case filed against them in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scam.
The acquittal was due to the prosecution’s failure to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt which was contained in Associate Justice Ronald B. Moreno’s decision granting the demurrers to evidence filed by the accused.
Thus, Reyes has become the rallying figure for detained individuals who languish in jail for any reason without being convicted.
Weaponizing accusations of non-bailable offenses against political foes has been a common ordeal, inflicted by those in power knowing the notoriously slow grind of justice in the country.
Also, many of those in jail, a cause for the congestion of several penal facilities, suffer pretrial detention either since they are accused of heinous crimes or they simply do not have the wherewithal to raise bail money.
Those found innocent after years of incarceration are merely let off as if their lost years were without consequence.
Add to that the harrowing emotional and psychological impact of prolonged trial detention in overcrowded jails.
Reyes petitioned the Supreme Court to release her from detention due to “violations of her right to due process” and to a “speedy, impartial and public trial.”
The irony of Reyes’s torment is that other powerful figures in the alleged scam, which had turned out to be a tool for political vengeance of a previous administration, have long been released, either through bail or acquittal.
Based on independent studies, persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), who are still presumed innocent, in the process of determining their guilt or innocence remain in detention an average of 529 days before their cases are resolved.
About 20 percent of the cases of the wrongly accused register an average stay of five years or more until they are freed.
Some, however, are held in detention for more than 15 years, only to be found innocent of the charges against them.
Thus, the loss of freedom of a suspect, who under the Constitution enjoys the presumption of innocence, starts from the denial of bail.
A legal expert said that in the “perverted processes and dynamics of the Philippine criminal justice system, the denial or grant of bail becomes the most important decision point, more important than the finding of guilt or innocence.”
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.
On average, bail hearings take at least 120 days, and in some cases can drag on for up to three to six years.
Public 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 should their bail petition even be granted.
The next gauntlet for an accused, when denied bail, is undergoing the full length of the trial proceedings where postponement of the hearings is a given.
Even for high-profile cases, hearings come once every two to three months, only to be postponed again.
In a year, detainees can have four to six hearings scheduled, with only one or two pushing through, which is specially true for drug cases. The way out for impoverished detainees, after languishing in jail for two to three years, even if they are innocent, is to simply plead guilty to a lower offense to be released.
Thus, they are transformed from prisoners who were never convicted to convicts who were never tried, which entails a social cost, particularly in finding a job.
The state should have a mechanism to compensate citizens who unjustly lost the most productive part of their lives after being accused of a wrongdoing that was never proven in court.
The case of Gigi Reyes is a reminder that the snail-paced justice system and the perversions associated with it are the biggest cause of social inequality that afflicts Filipinos.