A PERSON convicted of a heinous crime is sure to rot in jail for the rest of his life.
And so thought Thelma Chiong, mother of 21-year-old Jacqueline and 19-year-old Marijoy, who were abducted outside the Ayala Center Cebu on the night of July 16, 1997. The sisters were later raped and killed.
Marijoy’s body was dumped in a ravine in Sitio Tan-awan, Barangay Guadalupe, Carcar City two days later. Jacqueline was never found.
The court found Francisco Juan “Paco” Larrañaga, Josman Aznar, Rowen Adlawan, Alberto Caño, Ariel Balansag and brothers James Andrew and James Anthony Uy guilty and sentenced them to two life terms.
In February 2004, the Supreme Court upheld their conviction and imposed the death penalty on Larrañaga, Aznar, Adlawan, Caño and Balansag.
They would have suffered the fate of Leo Echegaray, the first Filipino to be meted the death penalty after it was reinstated in 1993. Echegaray was convicted of raping the 10-year-old daughter of his live-in partner and was executed via lethal injection in 1999.
His death sparked a national debate over the legality and the morality of the death sentence, which was later abolished in 2006 under Republic Act (RA) 9346.
And so the five men were condemned to languish inside the National Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City for the rest of their lives. Larrañaga, who had dual Filipino and Spanish citizenship, was later transferred to a prison facility in Spain. The move was in line with the Treaty of Sentenced Persons signed between the two countries.
In 2015, it was learned that Larrañaga was working in a restaurant near his apartment in San Sebastian in the Basque region.
The turn of events must have inspired his fellow convicts to hope that they, too, would someday walk free, especially when then president Benigno Aquino III signed Republic Act 10592, or the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) law, in May 2013, which basically allowed sentences to be reduced based on good conduct.
Earlier this week, GMA News reported that it had obtained the release orders for Adlawan, Caño and Balansag.
Bureau of Corrections Director Nicanor Faeldon immediately denied signing the documents. But whether he was telling the truth or not is beside the point.
As Thelma pointed out, a person whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment cannot avail himself of the GCTA law. That was guaranteed by RA 9346, she said.
So Adlawan, Caño and Balansag will just have to wait for another “miracle.”