(Eagle News)-The Supreme Court en banc has denied the petition of Antonio Sanchez and several others against the Good Conduct Time Allowance Law’s revised implementing rules and regulations that exclude convicts of heinous crimes and others from availing of the benefits of the law.
In a resolution, the SC said it junked the petition for mandamus filed against Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra and the Bureau of Corrections for the petitioners’ failure to pay docket and other fees, lack of proof of service and insufficiency in form of the verification and certificate of forum shopping, which appeared to not have been notarized.
The SC also noted the petitioners’ failure to file the required number of copies of the petition.
Sanchez, former Calauan, Laguna mayor, was convicted of the killing of two University of the Philippines Los Baños students and the rape of one of them in the 1990s.
He was supposed to be among those released last year under the GCTA law that allows for the reduction of an inmate’s sentence period for good conduct.
The Department of Justice, however, ordered a review of the IRR of the law, and came up with revised ones that explicitly exclude convicts of heinous crimes, recidivists, habitual delinquents and escapees from benefitting from the law. With a report from Moira Encina
