THE Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American drama film based on a Stephen King novella.
It revolves around the characters of banker Andy Dufresne, who is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and is sentenced to two consecutive life terms at the Shawshank State Penitentiary in Maine in 1947, and Ellis “Red” Redding, who is serving a life sentence and is the prison’s contraband smuggler.
Andy befriends the prison’s librarian, Brooks Hatlen, who has been an inmate at Shawshank since 1905. It doesn’t say what Brooks’ crime was, er because of the lengthy sentence.
In 1955, Andy tries to calm down Brooks who holds a knife to another inmate’s throat. Andy later learns that Brooks is distraught after receiving news of his parole. Killing the inmate would have been his way of staying in jail.
Red says Brooks has been “institutionalized” after being in the facility too long.
When Brooks is finally freed after almost 50 years inside, he finds a world much changed. Unable to cope, he takes his own life.
Jesus Ranoco Negro Jr. was released more than a year ago from the National Bilibid Prison after serving 30 years.
The 50-year-old Jesus was convicted of eight counts of murder and one count of frustrated murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was no troublemaker so he was able to avail himself of the good conduct time allowance (GCTA) system.
But when he learned of President Rodrigo Duterte’s ultimatum on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019, which gave convicts freed by the GCTA law 15 days from Wednesday to turn themselves in or face a P1 million bounty on their heads, he showed up at the Bogo City Police Station to surrender.
Jesus, a former soldier, considers Duterte his commander-in-chief. And so he obeyed the President’s order.
The public doesn’t know what his life has been since his release a year ago. After all, Jesus did spend more time incarcerated than being a free man. He must have left many friends behind and missed his daily routine inside.
So much has changed in three decades and not all must have been easy to accept. Perhaps, like Brooks, Jesus has had a hard time coping with his freedom in a world that he no longer recognizes. The possibility of returning to the familiar must have been welcome news.
That, or Jesus just wasn’t comfortable with the idea of a P1 million bounty on his head.