EDITORIAL - Miscarriage of justice

In Hong Kong, Ilocos Sur congressman Ronald Singson was arrested for drug trafficking in July 2010, then tried and convicted of the lesser offense of drug possession upon his plea. He served his sentence and was freed last year, spending only a total of about two years behind bars.

In Manila, at Philippine National Police headquarters at Camp Crame, a woman arrested for drug possession in December 2007 remained in detention for five years with no case filed against her in court. Joanne Urbina’s case was literally forgotten by the prosecutor handling the case, who said the documents were misplaced and buried in a pile when he transferred office.

You wonder what other cases lie rotting away in the work pile of Assistant State Prosecutor Gerard Gaerlan, who reportedly explained, in an affidavit submitted to the Office of the Solicitor General, that Urbina’s papers got lost when he transferred his office from the Department of Justice annex to the new multipurpose building.

Gaerlan initially resolved the case quickly enough and submitted it for resolution to Deputy State Prosecutor Miguel Gudio on March 28, 2008. The case made its slow way through the bureaucratic maze, finding its way to Justice Undersecretary Jose Vicente Salazar, who ordered a revision of the draft resolution. The case was returned to Gaerlan on Nov. 25, 2010.

After years of waiting, Urbina took her case to the Court of Appeals. Last week the CA ordered Urbina released, calling her incarceration “unreasonable, intolerable and shockingly unimaginable.” It is also a violation of her basic rights, to which amnesia or senility of prosecutors cannot be accepted as an excuse.

Five years is long enough for a court trial; it’s even worse for a case to languish at the prosecutor’s level. It’s an injustice, and downright criminal.