Eight and a half years is a long time for adjudication. So lawyer Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes can claim “delayed trial” in filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and seeking her release.
Last Thursday night, Reyes walked free from the Taguig City Jail at Camp Bagong Diwa, where she had been detained since July 2014 after the Sandiganbayan ordered her arrest for plunder together with her former boss, Juan Ponce Enrile.
In a precedent-setting decision, the Supreme Court (SC) granted Reyes’ petition not for bail, which had been rejected by the Sandiganbayan, but for a writ of habeas corpus, which allowed her to be freed temporarily without her shelling out a single centavo.
Considering the glacial pace of Philippine justice, the decision could open the floodgates for similar requests from many other persons who have been rotting in jail for ages as their cases crawl through the judicial mill.
Realizing this, Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra said his initial assessment of the SC decision is that it does not set a “blanket precedent,” and must be applied merely on “a case to case basis.”
Can the ruling be applied in the case of another high-profile detainee who has languished at Camp Crame for six years now? Leila de Lima was still a senator when she was arrested on Feb. 24, 2017, on three counts of conspiracy to commit illegal drug trading.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said on Friday that the SC ruling might apply to De Lima’s case.
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One of De Lima’s lawyers, Dino de Leon, said that unlike Reyes, who invoked the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus after her petition for bail was denied, the courts have yet to act on De Lima’s bail petition in one of the two cases still pending against her. The bail petition in the other case has been denied.
The SC had allowed Enrile to post bail in 2015, in a controversial decision based on humanitarian grounds owing to his advanced age and fragile health.
But Enrile, who turns 99 this Valentine’s Day, is apparently not too old or frail to serve as chief legal counsel of President Marcos. This privileged position in the corridors of power is inevitably suspected to be a factor in Reyes’ provisional release.
Gigi Reyes’ legal team is led by another nonagenarian, Estelito Mendoza, who turned 93 last Jan. 5. Widely seen as the Supreme Court’s eminence grise, Mendoza also represented Bongbong Marcos in the disqualification cases filed against him in his presidential bid.
Mendoza, his hearing now impaired but obviously not his brain, told “The Chiefs” last Friday on Cignal TV’s One News that he decided to invoke the argument for unlawful or unjust detention, and a defendant’s constitutional right to a speedy trial, after noting that Reyes had been held without bail longer than president-turned-congresswoman Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Sen. Bong Revilla, from arrest to acquittal for plunder.
The SC didn’t act speedily enough; Reyes’ petition for the writ was filed in January 2021.
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As Enrile’s chief of staff when he was a senator, Reyes is accused of direct involvement in funneling up to P172.8 million of JPE’s pork barrel funds to ghost projects of bogus non-government organizations, in a scheme cooked up allegedly by businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles.
Before her arrest, Reyes had maintained a high-profile lifestyle, with her 50th birthday bash held at a five-star hotel attended by the top government officialdom led by then president Noynoy Aquino.
A miffed Cristina Ponce Enrile had openly accused Reyes of having an affair with JPE – something he has consistently denied. But when he was appointed by BBM as chief legal counsel, a common prediction was that Reyes’ release, even if only provisional, was not far behind.
De Lima was acquitted last year in one of the three cases. Prosecutors have insisted that despite the recantations of several key witnesses against her, the two remaining cases against her are strong.
The best way to establish this is to resolve the case. Maybe she should again invoke the SC ruling on continuous trial, which was used with impressive results in the drug possession case filed against Juanito Jose Remulla III, a son of Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla.
Following Juanito Remulla’s acquittal in less than three months by Las Piñas Regional Trial Court Branch 197 Judge Ricardo Moldez II, “sana all” trended.
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One of Remulla’s lawyers, Pearlito Campanilla, told The Chiefs after the acquittal that the SC guidelines on continuous trial had been in place since 2017. Under Section 19 of Republic Act 9165, all drug cases must be finished within 75 days, Campanilla told us, and Moldez simply complied with it.
Should defendants prod the judge about the rule, or should the judge comply motu proprio? Campanilla said he was not sure.
De Leon told us De Lima has invoked the rule at every opportunity, but prosecutors always find reasons to delay the proceedings. Also, several judges have withdrawn from the case, further slowing adjudication.
Perhaps Enrile and Reyes should also invoke the SC rule in their cases. But what if they are found guilty? Snail-paced justice also has its advantages.
After all, several of the defendants in the pork barrel scam have been convicted. Among them was lawyer Richard Cambe, who died of a stroke while serving his sentence for the pork barrel scam in Bilibid. Cambe was thrown under the bus by his former boss Bong Revilla, who was acquitted in the scam. Incidentally, when do we get back our P124 million tax money from Revilla, as ordered by the Sandiganbayan? Is this like estate taxes – if it’s P2 million, you have to pay; if it’s P200 billion, you’re exempted?
In the case of Gigi Reyes, she has suffered the ordeal that many others have also faced, with many languishing even longer in detention while undergoing trial.
It’s doubtful that she can ever get her old life back. In this country where slow justice makes jumping to conclusions a national pastime, she has already been convicted in the court of public opinion, unless she can prove her innocence.
She can be re-arrested any time if she violates the terms of her release. But the terms allow her to even travel overseas, as long as she gets approval from the Sandiganbayan.
Sana all? We can only hope that the application of what is now dubbed as the “Gigi Reyes doctrine” is not merely the latest manifestation of the Orwellian idea that some are more equal than others.