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Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Roperos: Failure of justice
By Godofredo M. Roperos
WHAT does it take for a young man to lose his right as free man over a period of almost five years?
Easy. Just be unschooled and ignorant of his rights, sniff “rugby” and be caught, then be sure of getting the indifference of some people in the judiciary.
And presto, placed in jail, he can be a man without freedom. And being unschooled and ignorant of his rights, he can stay in prison for good, as Antonio Malinao Kalipayan found out.
Ironically, Antonio’s middle and family name appear completely opposite to what happened to him over the past years.
Meaning “peace and happiness,” it is what he did not have while jailed at the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center for having been caught sniffing the prohibited rugby and sentenced to stay six months in prison for it.
It is further ironic that rugby is a commodity anyone can obtain at will in any hardware without hindrance.
Public concern should definitely go to the case of Kalipayan. His experience exposed a horrifying flaw in our justice system, where our ignorant or unschooled citizens who come in Dutch with our laws, might have to languish in jail for the rest of their lives.
Unless, of course, by a quirk of fate or accident, someone would stumble on the facts of the case, like the Integrated Bar of the Phils, while doing research, came upon Kalipayan’s case.
The new BBRC warden had reportedly said that Antonio’s case might not be an isolated one at all. There could be more in the BBRC. There are really more, in fact, and Supt. Nestor Velasquez Sr. gave an off-hand estimate of some 200 inmates who are also suffering similar fates as Kalipayan.
The number may be small compared to the total number of inmates now being crammed into the BBRC but the circumstance surrounding their overstay is horrifying.
How can a society like ours that claims to be democratic and civilized allow the incarceration of ignorant and naive citizens simply because they do not know their rights?
Sure, the law excuses no one, but their minor brushes with the law should be handled with compassion and understanding because they do not know what to do to get out of it. And those who know and who are in position to help, assume a stance of cruel indifference.
How many Antonio Kalipayans may be living miserable lives in our penal system’s “human depositories” throughout the width and breadth of the nation?
Only God and the individual jailers keeping inventory of the human criminal stock we have in the jails, which are said to be even a very poor excuse for warehouses, know how they have been helplessly kept, simply because the proper documents that should set them free have not been given.
I believe there are many, many more inmates kept at the BBRC, and at the provincial jail who ought really not to be there anymore. But their cases have been kept in the freezer because they do not have any close kin who can follow up with the paper work.
Neither do they have the needed financial wherewithal that could get them expert legal assistance from law practitioners. In the face of this poverty, what choice do they have?
Truly, our judiciary should have a mechanism through which the poor and unschooled who are brought to court should get not only legal assistance but also a briefing from time to time on the status of their case.
It is important that they should be enlightened on matters and issues they are up against. In Kalipayan’s case, the court personnel and his counsel failed to inform him that he could be free in six months and work on his release papers after that.
Poor Kalipayan, how could he recover his lost years, and who could be made to answer for such loss which certainly is not his fault?
(September 16, 2003 issue)
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