The folly of hospital arrest

When, few days ago, practically all national and local newspapers screamed in their headlines the admission to bail and the subsequent release of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from incarceration, I could not decipher my feeling. Why was I contented with the court order? I do remember that in the many articles I wrote when the president was still a Malacañang tenant, my language against her administration was acerbic. To denounce some of her judgment calls that I failed to appreciate positively, I held no punches as if we were sworn personal enemies. Those write-ups were both sad and one-sided because she did not know me although my castigation of some of her pronouncements was severely unpleasant.

Like some among us who wanted to see her in continued captivity, I should have rued that day when the former president got her temporary liberty. Many things came to my mind. The fertilizer scandal, the ZTE-NBN deal, the misuse of the Road Users Tax among the most odious. Save for the broadband deal which was aborted by a timely whistle blowing, those other issues carried with them scandalous misapplication of billions of public funds. The staggering amounts involved in those yet un-litigated cases would have been enough to criticize the judge for allowing her to go home.

But, believe me, rather than being indignant with the grant of the petition for the former president’s bail, I felt that the judge did something right. Well, to set my observation in proper perspectives this early and in the process, skirt the issue of transfer of affection, let me state clearly that I did not agree with the initial findings of the judge that the evidence against the accused was not strong as to keep her in physical custody. Certainly, the testimony of a witness who walked in the corridors of the Ampatuan power, as reported on papers, was damning. It would have been enough to deny the former president’s move to be allowed to post bail.

True to the off tangent nature of this column, however, I look at the scene from a different point of view. The court ruling, in adroitly moving away from this thing called hospital arrest, removes the basis of a legal error.

Hospital arrest is a legal aberration of the incredible kind. It does not exist in law. The rules of court do not list hospital arrest (or a house arrest, as in the case of another former president) as a temporary relief to an accused. When an accusation, the lawyers call it information, is founded upon probable cause and a warrant is issued for the arrest of an accused, the latter has to be brought to a detention cell. Our books say simply of an accused being either put behind bars on an indictment that is considered non-bailable as long as it is supported by strong evidence, or otherwise allowed, as a matter of right, to put up bail for a temporary liberty while the case is being tried.

Yes, the social elite and the politically high strung in our midst, specially when confronted with non-bailable offense, can resort to a hospital as a form of a fleeting sanctuary on the suggestion that theirs is a medical case of the urgent nature. Theoretically, the warrant server arrests the accused, but, in deference to a perceived physical condition, awaits for the doctor’s confirmation. Just the same, the hospitalization is supposed to last only as long as the illness remains to be life threatening rather than the eternal kind of relief we are presently witnessing.

The former president just confirmed the folly of hospital arrest. Soon after the release order was issued, she said goodbye to the hospital. In other words, she was not that sick as to be confined in the hospital rather than in a prison cell. She must have just pretended to be sick.

So, with its order granting the former president’s bail, the court maneuvers itself freely from the umbra of allowing a legal aberration to continue to exist. No one can accuse the court, or our judiciary, of permitting hospital arrest, as a form of escape from legal detention. There is no more arrest, hospital or otherwise, to speak of. That is the consequence of the bail order and because it somehow cleans the slate, I am contented with it. Grrr. 

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