Friday, October 10, 2008 Wenceslao: Undoing criminal justice system’s gains By Bong O. Wenceslao Candid Thoughts
PARDONS of convicts or commutation of sentences are not usually laced with good intentions. And these are rarely labeled fair by relatives of the convicts’ victims. People do not easily observe this because most of those who were pardoned or whose sentences were commuted are low profile. The case of Claudio Teehankee Jr. is not one of those.
And Teehankee was not the first. Under President Arroyo’s watch alone, many high-profile convicts have been freed, often sparking uproar.
Remember plunder convict Joseph Estrada? Or priest killer Norberto Manero?
This President really has no qualms freeing people that our criminal justice system spent time and money to nab and convict.
Teehankee was convicted for the murder of Maureen Hultman and her friend Roland John Chapman and the wounding of Jussi Leino in Dasmariñas, Makati City in July 1991. He is the son of former Supreme Court chief justice Claudio Teehankee and brother of Ambassador Manuel Teehankee, himself a former justice undersecretary.
Seventeen years, the length of time Teehankee spent in jail before he was released this week, seems like too long ago. That seems to be the basis for the insistence of his relatives and friends in saying he has suffered enough.
To the Hultmans and Chapmans, however, time is relative. To them, the incident surely seemed like it happened yesterday.
The reason why the release of Teehankee has created a furor is because there appears to be a disjoint in the crime-punishment equation. The killing of Hultman and Chapman and the wounding of Leino made popular the term “heinous crime.” Thus, the expectation was that punishment for the loss of lives and injury would also be heavy.
How heavy is “heavy” is, again, relative. For adherents of the principle “a tooth for a tooth,” Teehankee’s life is not enough to pay even only for the loss of Hultman’s and Chapman’s lives. For opponents of the death penalty, they probably would have wanted Teehankee to literally rot in jail. Both views did not envision early freedom.
So what does this make of the Arroyo government? One that unmakes what the criminal justice system makes. Every conviction made, like those of Erap, Manero and the others, was hailed as a triumph of the judicial process and proof that the justice system still works. President Arroyo’s use of her power to pardon destroyed that belief.
I would not be surprised, then, that calls for the return of the death penalty will be renewed. Jail term as a penalty looks already unreliable as it is with the special treatment given to high-profile convicts. With the President unfairly using his power to pardon, the picture of our penal system looks gloomy. Death penalty as alternative would be favored.
I don’t know if this government, after surviving impeachment and coup scares, still has the humility to listen to the people’s pulse. But it must be reminded that the Marcos dictatorship fell not mainly on economic but on justice issues. The release of Teehankee may not have broken the camel’s back, but it made the camel look pathetic.
The hope is that President Arroyo will now treat with care the cases of other high-profile convicts whose relatives may now be lining up in Malacañang in the hope that they will be given the special favor that the relatives of Teehankee, et al received.
(khanwens@yahoo.com/ my blog: cebuano.wordpress.com)
