Roxas asks SC to release 15 detainees

Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas: Reslease 15 detainees. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas on Wednesday asked Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno to release 15 detainees still waiting for their cases to move but who have languished in jail for more than the period usually imposed for their alleged crimes.

Roxas was at the Supreme Court along with Justice Secretary Leila De Lima to attend the first meeting since 2011 of the Justice Sector Coordinating Council—the first under the watch of Sereno.

The three top officials discussed the problems of jail and case decongestion and “how to make the processes work better,” according to SC spokesman Theodore Te.

Emerging after the two-hour-long meeting, Roxas told reporters that he presented the case of the 15 detainees for hopefully the immediate action of the Chief Justice.

“For humanitarian and justice reasons, they should be released,” he said of the 15 detainees who came to his attention after he ordered a survey of such detainees in the custody of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology.

Roxas said these detainees have languished in jail because their cases were not moving as their hearings were always postponed or rescheduled.

Roxas said he intended to order a survey of similar cases this time in the municipal and provincial jails in the country.

For her part, De Lima said the JSCC was an existing mechanism through which the Departments of Justice and Interior and Local Government and the Supreme Court could “share the efforts, programs and projects towards achieving reforms in the justice sector.”