Bureau of Corrections chief Nicanor Faeldon believes he is doing a good job and says he will not resign, even though he came a hair’s breath of freeing on good behavior a convicted rapist and murderer, whose crime in 1993 shocked an entire nation.
That inmate was Antonio Sanchez, former mayor of Calauan, Laguna, and his crime was the rape and murder of UP Los Baños student Eileen Sarmenta and her boyfriend, Allan Gomez.
On the evening of June 28, 1993, Sarmenta and Gomez were abducted by Sanchez’s henchmen at gunpoint, and taken to a rest house owned by the mayor. The men told the mayor Sarmenta was a gift.
While the mayor raped the bound and gagged Sarmenta, his men beat up Gomez. At about 1 a.m., when the mayor was done, he left Sarmienta to be gang-raped by his men, who then killed her and Gomez.
After a 16-month trial, Sanchez and his henchmen were convicted, and the mayor was sentenced to seven life sentences—or the equivalent of 40 years for each life term.
In 2010, while serving time, Sanchez was caught smuggling shabu in a statue of the Virgin Mary.
This is the man Faeldon was close to releasing—and only public outrage at the news, not any revelation of conscience, caused him to halt the process that by his own admission he started.
Faeldon is splitting hairs when he says he never signed a release order for Sanchez, but merely issued a memo recommending his early release.
Testifying before the Senate, Faeldon said he was only doing his job in carrying out Republic Act No. 10592 or the GCTA (Good Conduct Time Allowance) Law, which cuts prison sentences for good behavior.
When asked how an inmate who had been caught smuggling shabu could be considered well behaved, Faeldon explained that under the rules covering the GCTA law, a convict is deprived of GCTA points only for the month the violation was committed.
Moreover, he told the Senate hearing, there is no explicit provision in the GGCTA Law that excludes inmates convicted of heinous crimes.
These last two points suggest there is much work that Congress needs to do to correct the gaping loopholes of a law passed during the previous Aquino administration.
But it is not sufficient that Faeldon pin the blame on somebody else. Ultimately, he is responsible for whatever happens at BuCor and the New Bilibid Prison. It is also not enough for Faeldon to claim he could find no record of Sanchez’s previous violations while in prison because they were not properly documented.
The BuCor chief’s refrain that he ultimately stopped Sanchez’s release rings hollow, as it is clear that if there were no public outrcy, another notorious murderer and rapist would quietly walk free. After all, if Faeldon had his reservations from the start, why did he issue a memo to begin the release process?
A poorly drafted law doesn’t excuse Faeldon’s incompetence or his ignorance of the circumstances of the convicts he proposes to release. Certainly, it gives him no right to claim that he’s been doing a good job.