Mely Cruz (not her real name) is 52 and a mother of three. Up until last week, having anything in common with a former senator's son was probably the farthest thing in her mind. But last Thursday, Hubert Webb, son of former Sen. Freddie Webb, was found guilty of the 1991 rape and murder of Carmela Vizconde, 18, and the murder of her mother and little sister. Just like Mely, Webb and seven of his co-accused got life sentences.
But Mely, who got convicted in 1997, was never accused of killing anyone. Her crime, authorities said, was selling 18 grams of marijuana -- equivalent to about a sachet and a quarter of three-in-one instant coffee preparation.
Mely is only one among the 153 drug convicts at the overcrowded Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) in Mandaluyong City. These convicts are pointed to by authorities as proof that they are serious about fighting the drug menace, and that they have been busy catching the people behind the problem.
Drug abuse has been the bogey raised by authorities for almost every brutal crime committed in the last several years. Webb and company themselves, according to the prosecution's confessed drug addict of a star witness, were on drugs when they raped Carmela and then killed her and her mother and sister. This is largely why first-time offenders like Mely have been feeling the full force of the law and getting harsh punishment once reserved for hard-core criminals.
Yet even as authorities increase their haul of drug suspects and have the satisfaction of seeing them sentenced to prison, substance abuse remains rampant. According to a 1998 Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) report, the prevalence of drug abuse has not changed over the years. It adds that this scourge has affected 14 percent of the country's 41,945 barangays, with seven percent of Filipinos between 15 to 29 exposed to illegal drugs.
Then again, it should be no surprise that the situation is still dismal. While apparently low-level drug offenders like Mely are now packing jails, where they are bound to spend years -- if not the rest of their lives -- the big time drug bosses remain free.
Why this is so, even some police officers acknowledge, is that drug offense arrests have largely been targeted at street-level pushing. Says an anti-narcotics officer: "Marami kaming nahuhuli na mahihirap talaga. Meron nga mga nangongomisyon lang, nagbebenta ng ilang gramo para lang madaling magkapera. Maawa ka rin pero trabaho lang ang ginagawa namin (A lot of those we arrest are really poor. There are even those who work just on commission, selling a few grams just so they can have quick money. You do pity them, but we are just doing our job)."
Interestingly enough, the rate women are getting convicted of drug charges is outpacing that of male drug suspects. To be sure, male drug offenders continue to outnumber females nine to one. But while male drug convicts make up just seven percent of the total inmate population at the National Bilibid Prison and the country's five other penal farms, 20 percent of the CIW inmates are serving time for violations of Republic Act No. 6425, the Dangerous Drug Act of 1972.
In 1997, about 23 percent of the new inmates at CIW were drug convicts. By 1999, this figure had shot up to 38 percent; nine of the drug convicts there are also above 50 years old. Chances are, not one among these women could be described as a major player in the narcotics business.
That the trade's bosses are seldom landing behind bars may be gleaned from the spate of reports in the last few years regarding suspected high-level drug dealers being coddled by the police, all the way to the top brass.
Still fresh in the public's memory is the charge leveled against suspended Philippine National Police chief Deputy Director General Roberto Lastimoso of coddling a drug trafficker. There is also the P650,000-bribe allegedly received by Superintendent Francisco Ovilla of Quezon City for the release of two foreign drug traffickers. Then there is the 1993 acquittal of businessman Alfredo Tiongson, a suspected member of a Hong Kong triad, of the charge of smuggling some 80 kilos of shabu. In the few times that drug dealers are caught and charged, some even get away with motions for suspended trial and for rehabilitation from courts, enabling them to spend time in treatment centers rather than behind bars. One such "confinee" in a government rehabilitation center has been in an out of the institution for six times already since his first arrest in 1989, enjoying the "dormitory-living conditions" of the facility.
President Estrada admitted during the launch of his administration's anti-drug campaign last August that the illegal trade's masterminds are hard to go after because they are rich and influential, and with many friends "even in government."
Lawyer Jose Manuel Diokno, acting chairman of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), says an offender's place in the drug trade is easily gauged from the legal counsel representing the person. "You know the accused has backing because the ones handling the case are private lawyers who really know the ins and outs of trials. But most of the time it's just the PAO (Public Attorney's Office) lawyer, and that's how you know the accused is just small-time."
CIW superintendent Rachel Ruelo herself notes, "So many persons convicted of drug crimes belong to the lowest level of our society -- illiterates, the poor. They are in prison because they could not hire good lawyers for their defense."
At the same time, there appears to be a problem with the law itself, as well as the way the courts seem to be interpreting it. The mandatory sentencing under existing drug laws has almost always guaranteed disproportionate sentences for many minor drug offenders. With penalties based solely on the amount of the drug possessed or sold, a one-time drug courier with marginal participation in drug transactions is treated no differently from a high-level drug dealing manager of a major drug distribution network.
Sentences for drug felonies have also gone beyond the prescribed limits stipulated in RA 6425. They now range from a minimum of life imprisonment to the maximum penalty of death. (In large part because of the brutal slaying of the Vizcondes, capital punishment was reimposed in 1994 for heinous crimes.)
In the last five years, four women drug offenders have been sentenced to die by lethal injection. Convicted drug trafficker Josefina Esparas, though, had her death sentence commuted by the President, saving her from her scheduled execution last Oct. 20.
Short of the death penalty, excessive sentences have been meted out to many others, including Marcelina Biswek, who was serving double life terms for selling 88 kilos of marijuana when she died of cancer last June. She was 78 years old.
The stash of marijuana supposedly handed by Ignacia Sebastian (not her real name), now 74, to a known drug dealer was considerably less than Lola Marcelina's -- just 300 grams. But that did not save Lola Ignacia, who has had cataracts removed from her eyes but still suffers from arthritis and diabetes, from a conviction of life imprisonment in 1996.
In 1998, the PAO filed a motion before the Court of Appeals to modify Lola Ignacia's sentence because the penalty imposed was "not in accord with the provisions of the law on the matter." The PAO said favorable provisions of RA 7659, which amended the Act in December 1993, and as upheld by 1994 rulings of the Supreme Court in the cases of People vs Simon and People vs Crisanta Santos, should have been applied in Lola Ignacia's case.
In these cases, the Supreme Court, explaining Sec. 20 of RA 7659, said the penalties for possession or sale of marijuana when the quantity involved is less than 750 grams should be:
* Six months and one day to six years for 249 grams of less;
* Six years and one day to 12 years maximum for 250 grams to 498 grams.
* 12 years and one day to 20 years maximum for 499 to 749 grams.
Accordingly, the PAO argued that Lola Ignacia should have been "meted out a penalty of six years and one day as minimum to 12 years as maximum, and not life imprisonment."
In truth, the court that sentenced Lola Ignacia to life imprisonment also described the amount of marijuana involved as "negligible." But it added, "What the law punishes is not the material damage suffered by the buyer who spends a big amount for so little, but rather the deleterious effect that such hallucinogenic drug causes to the human brain rendering it inutile and the person with a damaged brain a useless member of society."
No one is about to say that substance abuse is severely damaging, both to individuals who fall victim to it and to society at large. But with the measures being taken by the country's authorities apparently having not much impact, a fierce debate has risen between those who say even more stringent laws are needed, and those who are lobbying for a complete rethink on how to address the problem.
Proposed bills in both chambers of Congress are seeking to do even more than existing laws. The consolidated bill in the House endeavoring to institute a new Dangerous Drugs Act reduces the amount of illegal drugs penalized with life imprisonment to death. For marijuana, the quantities are lessened from 750 grams or more to 200 grams or more. For shabu, the quantities are diminished from 200 grams or more to 15 grams or more.
The Senate version sponsored by Sen. James Barbers (Lakas) is even more drastic. The Barbers bill seeks to reduce quantities of shabu punishable by life imprisonment to death to only 10 grams.
This is even as the CIW's Ruelo, who points out that the rehabilitation of national prisoners is supposed to be the aim of the Bureau of Corrections, says that "staying in prison for more than 10 years is too much to rehabilitate an individual."
Diokno, for his part, says, "No matter how much rhetoric they give about stopping the drug menace, (if) you have government coddling syndicates, nothing will happen."
He argues instead for a system similar to those in European countries such as the Netherlands or the United Kingdom. "They look at drug addiction as a disease, not a crime," he says. "And the criminal in their systems is the syndicate. All their resources -- from the prosecution to the police -- do not go anymore to catching the user or even the small-time pusher, but to stopping the syndicates."
At present, the country's drug laws and enforcement programs are modeled after those of the United States, which is considered the world capital of drug consumption. According to the international organization of Human Rights Watch (HRW), the United States is where human rights violations in the name of drug control are most starkly displayed.
While taking no position on the merits of any particular counter-narcotics objective, HRW says that at the very least, efforts to curtain drug abuse and drug trafficking must be both humane and proportional to the gravity of the offense. "Conviction of a crime," it says, "is not license for the imposition of arbitrarily severe punishment."
Human rights advocates also say that being a drug offense suspect should not make anyone a victim of abusive and indiscriminate tactics of narcotics officers. But activists say that is precisely the fate that befalls most of those pursued by Philippine authorities for drug offenses.
Take the experience of 66-year-old Marina Sandoval (not her real name), who was arrested in 1994 while boarding a jeepney she hired to transport some furniture to her house. She was being suspected as a drug pusher, she was told. The agents did not show her any kind of warrant, but they conducted searches in her house and mini-grocery. Then, Lola Marina says, they looted her of every piece of belonging.
"They did not get any evidence to use against me," she says. "But they got everything in my grocery and my home. They left nothing. They even got my towel."
Lola Marina says the police officers also kept asking her for money, prompting her to file a countercharge before a Makati trial court. Lola Marina's lawyer, constantly harassed by those who arrested her, never appeared in court hearings. Lola Marina says she was surprised to see the officers present 996.8 grams of shabu that they said she was about to illegally transport when she was arrested.
But the court found her testimony incredulous, upheld the warrantless arrest and search by the police, and sentenced her to life imprisonment with a fine of P500,000.
Legal insiders say the courts have been wont to give more credence to police evidence and testimonies, dismissing the denials of the accused as mere alibi. In buy-bust operations, the courts likewise uphold warrantless arrests as those arrested are said to be caught enflagrante delicto. As one judge ruled in handing out the life sentence on a 39-year-old woman farmer from Bontoc, Mt. Province, "search and seizure of the contraband and simultaneous arrest of the accused without warrant is justified." The judge who presided over Lola Marina's case even declared that "the decision not to secure a warrant of arrest or search warrant against the accused is an exercise of police discretion backed by their intelligence operation."
In cases involving drugs, there is always the presumption of regularity in the performance of duty of police officers doing buy-busts. This judicial presumption, says Diokno, dates back to the days of martial law, when it was used to justify the actions of intelligence agents in conducting raids and obtaining confessions from suspected subversives.
Fortunately for Lola Marina, the Office of the Ombudsman has found sufficient evidence to support her countercharge and has filed a case against her arresting officer. But it is unlikely that she will be able to get out of the punishment that had been meted her.
Anti-drug campaigners may argue that the harshness of drug laws is minimized by the measures that make it possible for offenders with indeterminate penalties not to serve their maximum sentences. But a presidential directive issued in January 1997 and which remains in force has suspended the processing of all cases involving convictions for violation of laws on prohibited drugs.
The HRW, in its 1997 report, "Cruel and Usual: Disproportionate Sentences for New York Drug Offenders," says "imprisonment is an inherently severe sentence; indeed it is the most coercive and drastic non-capital sanction imposed by constitutional democracies. Prison sentences are, accordingly, best reserved for people who seriously and wrongfully have injured or sought to injure the legally recognized interests of others through unlawful violence."
Judging by its actions, though, the government seems to believe that criminals ought to rot in prison or die by lethal injection. Ruelo says that should not be the case. "But if they want," she says, "they can always change the provisions of the law. To be consistent with the death penalty, let's do away with rehabilitation and shift back to punishment."