Ex-mayor Antonio Sanchez set for release

MANILA, Philippines — Former Calauan, Laguna mayor Antonio Sanchez, who was convicted for the 1993 rape and murder of University of the Philippines Los Baños students Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez, will likely walk free, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced yesterday.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra said Sanchez may be released from prison along with at least 11,000 inmates in the next two months because of a new law increasing good conduct time allowance (GCTA) and a Supreme Court (SC) decision applying the same law retroactively.

Guevarra said Sanchez would benefit from Republic Act 10592, which amended provisions of the Revised Penal Code and allowed the credit of preventive imprisonment and revision of GCTA of persons deprived of liberty.

“This law would benefit thousands of convicts, whether they are high-profile like Sanchez or ordinary prisoners,” the justice secretary said.

Guevarra could not give a timeframe as to when Sanchez would be freed.

“His prison sentence is being recomputed by the New Bilibid Prison,” Guevarra said.

Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) chief Nicanor Faeldon said inmates who were imprisoned from the 1990s would be included in the mass jail release.

“This is the result of the SC ruling, which granted early release to convicts if they behaved in prison,” Faeldon said.

He said they are planning to release 200 prisoners per day pending the review of their cases.

BuCor spokesman Capt. Eusebio del Rosario Jr. said they would recompute the sentence of convicts who entered the prisons first.

On March 11, 1995, Sanchez was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison by Judge Harriet Demetriou for the rape with homicide of Sarmenta and the killing of her boyfriend Gomez in 1993.

Guevarra believes that the victims’ relatives will oppose the possible release of Sanchez.

DOJ and BuCor officials said the mass release of prisoners would decongest the national penitentiary and other jails in the country.  – With Ralph Edwin Villanueva