Gives four other recommendations
(Eagle News)–Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra on Monday, Sept. 2, wants a standalone provision in Republic Act No. 10592 that says who exactly cannot benefit from the measure.
This was one of the recommendations Guevarra gave senators during the Senate hearing the GCTA law, should lawmakers, he said, decide to amend the measure to avoid any legal loopholes.
“Provisions of this law should be crafter better, in a better way. The intent of the law was to exclude those convicted of heinous crimes..but that came only after a tedious and laborious harmonization of the various provisions of this law,” Guevarra said.
Under the amended implementing rules and regulations of RA 10592, the provision that says that “recidivists,habitual delinquents, escapees and persons charged with heinous crimes are excluded from the coverage of this Act” is buried under the section of preventive imprisonment.
Guevarra also recommended that the legislature “state policy more clearly.”
He noted that the law had no “whereas clauses” which usually express such policy.
“To determine if the main thrust of this law is reformative or if we go for the retributive, or if it’s both, which has preponderance, rehabilitative or vice versa?” Guevarra said.
In his list of recommendations, Guevarra also said that the coverage of heinous crimes should be expressly enumerated in the law.
At present, Guevarra said authorities go by the definition of heinous crimes found in another law, specifically the death penalty law in 1993.
He said the law, which essentially classifies crimes into either one of two classifications: one where the penalty of death is mandatory, and these are the heinous crimes; and the other where courts have the discretion on whether the court imposes reclusion perpetua or death, was abolished in 2006.
“We are using the remnant of the law as basis to determine if one is a heinous crime. There is an avenue there that crime that was committed may not be a heinous crime,” he explained.
Guevarra also recommended that there be a transparency provision on the law, or one that requires, for instance, the publication of persons deprived of liberty who will be released whether through service of abbreviated sentences or service of whole sentences.
He said an oversight provision by Congress should also be included.
“This is obviously missing in a very important law like this,” he said.
