A MURDER convict from Cebu who had been released from the national penitentiary turned himself in to the law authorities Thursday night, Sept. 5, 2019.
Jesus Ranoco Negro Jr., 50, was a free man for a year.
He was released from the National Bilibid Prison (NBP) in August 2018 based on good conduct time allowance (GCTA).
But a verbal order from President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday, Sept. 4, to have all convicts who had been released on GCTA be recalled to jail, cut Negro’s liberty short. He gave them 15 days to be back in jail. If not, he will put up a P1 million bounty on each of them.
Duterte’s pronouncement followed the public uproar over the reported release order from the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) of former Calauan, Laguna mayor Antonio Sanchez.
Sanchez was sentenced to at least 30 years in prison for the rape of college student Eileen Sarmenta and the murder of her boyfriend, Allan Gomez, in 1993.
Three of the seven convicts in the kidnapping and serious illegal detention of sisters Jacqueline and Marijoy Chiong were also among those who got release orders in August 2019.
On Wednesday night, Negro turned himself in at the Bogo City Police Station. At past 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 5, he was brought to the Regional Special Operations Group (RSOG) of the Police Regional Office (PRO) 7.
Negro had learned of Duterte’s order from the news while he was home in Barangay Dakit, Bogo City, Cebu.
Negro was committed to a Cebu jail in 1988 after having been found guilty on eight counts of murder and one count of frustrated murder. He was moved to the NBP in Metro Manila in March 1990.
He had been sentenced to spend at least 30 years in jail.
In the 30 years he was in prison, Negro had never been marked for bad behavior. Not once had he been sent to solitary confinement, Negro said.
Prison life
Negro was a soldier.
In 1988 in Minglanilla, Cebu, he had the misfortune of encountering a group of bystanders (tambay) who made fun of him. The encounter turned violent and ended in deaths. He yielded himself to the authorities.
In prison, he took up short courses offered to inmates, among them counseling and guidance, fine arts and English communication.
Negro said that being a soldier, he considers President Duterte his commander-in-chief. And that means he obeys the President’s command.
P/Lt. Col. Emely Santos, Bogo City Police chief, said he was unaware that they had a released convict in their midst.
He and his men were surprised to see Negro showing up at the police station station last Sept. 4 telling them that he was surrendering to heed the President’s order.
He told them he was one of the 1,914 convicts ordered released that Duterte now wanted back in jail. (MPS)