JUDGE Soliver Peras yesterday ordered the continued stay of former Dapitan City Mayor Dominador Jalosjos Jr. in the Cebu Doctors’ Hospital while serving his sentence of one year and six months following his conviction for robbery about 44 years ago.
Peras, the Regional Trial Court Branch 10 presiding judge, said Jalosjos will remain confined in the hospital “until his wound is totally healed.”
The judge issued the directive after Jalosjos’s cardiovascular surgeon, Peter Mancao, testified why the former mayor has to stay in the hospital while he prepares for his open heart surgery.
Mancao said there is a need for Jalosjos to be confined in a sterile environment, and not in a jail facility.
Although Jalosjos is in “stable condition,” the doctor said Jalosjos has an “open wound in the skin on top of the heart.”
Mancao said he cannot give a definite time on how long Jalosjos will stay in the hospital since “we have to make sure that we will control the infection.”
Asked by Peras why Jalosjos is not in an intensive care unit, instead of in his executive room, Mancao replied, “There are more germs in the ICU actually than in the regular room.”
“Patients in the ICU are usually those with severe infections,” the doctor said. Mancao also said he discourages the putting on of shackles, or leg cuffs, on Jalosjos’s legs.
Cuffs
When the jail personnel went to Jalosjos’s room last week upon the judge’s order, Inocencio dela Cerna, lawyer of Jalosjos said the jail guards brought leg cuffs since hand cuffs were not available at that time.
“It is really the standard operating procedure for prisoners or detainees in the hospital that they have to be handcuffed. But, unfortunately, there were no handcuffs at that time so they brought shackles,” said dela Cerna.
Peras said he will ask the city jail warden to comment on the manifestation of Jalosjos’s lawyer to replace the leg cuffs with handcuffs.
Peras also directed Mancao to submit a weekly report on the progress of Jalosjos’s medical condition.
Surrender
Jalosjos, who has been confined at the CDU after he surrendered to the police on Jan. 23, said he yielded to the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in Central Visayas since his arrest warrant was issued by a Cebu City-based judge.
He said he has no worries about the security measures inside the hospital.
The CIDG 7 operatives served the arrest warrant for Jalosjos while he was in the hospital last week to start serving his sentence. Jalosjos, 72, will remain in the hospital due to his “life-threatening” heart ailments.
Peras earlier granted the request of dela Cerna to allow his client to stay in his executive as he prepares for his heart operation.
Jalosjos yielded himself to the CIDG on Jan. 23, following the arrest warrant issued by Judge Peras last Nov. 9, 2013.
The CIDG operatives went to Jalosjos’s executive room in the hospital at noontime and took his fingerprints and mugshots.
The arrest warrant against Jalosjos stemmed from his conviction of robbery on April 30, 1970 by then Circuit Criminal Court and now Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Cebu City.