Angeles City Judge Bernardita Erum holds court at the city jail as part of the Supreme Court’s 112th anniversary dubbed Judgement Day yesterday. Photo by Ding Cervantes
ANGELES CITY- The Supreme Court marked its 112th anniversary dubbed “Judgment Day” yesterday by freeing 74 jail inmates here and more in three other cities in the country, amid laments over the alleged failings of the Korean embassy and the Philippine National Police (PNP) over some of the inmates’ cases.
Angeles RTC Executive Judge Omar Viola said in an interview that a total of 74 inmates in the city jail here were slated to be released by 5 p.m. yesterday after marathon hearings on their cases by the RTC and MTC judges who held court at the jail starting morning as part of Judgment Day.
The 74 included mostly those whose cases, mostly “index crimes”, remained undecided for as long as nine years and those whose stay in jail pending the resolution of their cases already approximated the jail sentence in a guilty verdict.
This, even as Viola expressed lament over the failure of the Korean embassy to extend help to Korean nationals implicated in criminal cases in this city which hosts a significant number of expatriates and foreign tourists.
Viola cited the case of Korean nationals Cha Kung Chug, 42, and Kim Jae Sung, 25, who were among those slated for acquittal yesterday. They had been in jail here since 2008 on drug-related charges which their Filipino lawyers insisted were without bases.
“I had informed the Korean embassy about the case of Chug but there was no response at all. The two Koreans had to fend for themselves totally,” he said.
Chug’s lawyer Roseller Logronio said his client and Sung were arrested by cops after a woman alleged the two failed to pay her for her services and that they had used drugs while they were in a local motel.
He said the police never found any hard evidence to the girl’s allegations they had used illegal drugs in the motel.
At the same time, Viola said there have also been cases delayed arising from the transfer of assignment of police witnesses to far areas.
He recalled the case of a policeman in a drug case in this city, who was moved by his superiors to Baler, Aurora. “That’s in violation of R.A. 9165 involving the bungling of court cases,” he said.
But he noted that he has not charged any police officer had committed such offense because all of them had complied with his order to move back police witnesses.
Supreme Court deputy administrator Jenny Dolorino attended the brief hearings conducted by six regional trial courts (RTC) and three municipal trial courts (MTC) at the Angeles City jail, in line with yesterday’s commemoration.
Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) regional director Senior Supt. Arnold Obias said Judgment Day was also held simultaneously in Manila, Cebu, and Quezon City.
The holding of Judgment Day at the city jail here also indicated the same problems nagging the local penology system.
Obias said that up to now, the allocation for each inmate has remained at P50 per day and that congestion in the jail here has persisted.
Angeles jail information officer SJO3 Julius Alcaraz said the city jail here has 1,603 inmates limited to 804 square meters of floor area. He said that ideally, the size of the jail here is only for 300 persons.
He also noted that the penology standard of the United Nations is 3.7 square meters per detainee, which is smaller than the supposed BJMP standard of 4.7 square meters per person.
