A bill providing reparation to "wrongly jailed individuals" has been filed at the Philippine Senate.
Senate Bill 432 filed by Senator Jose "Jinggoy" Estrada was released to the media on Wednesday, a day after the Philippine Supreme Court acquitted Hubert Webb, who had been jailed for 15 years in connection with the celebrated Vizconde massacre.
Webb, son of an ex-senator, and six others were acquitted Tuesday of the grisly 1991 massacre of Estrellita Vizconde and her daughters Jennifer, 7, and Carmela, 18, who was raped before being stabbed to death.
The bill stipulates that "any person who may have suffered penalty, criminally through conviction but subsequently judicially declared as erroneous, shall heretofore be compensated and be entitled to reparation as herein provided."
Monetary compensation for damages for wrong imprisonment suffered, the bill said, should not exceed twice the amount of income in the year prior to his/her arrest.
"An additional amount of equivalent to one-fourth of one percent of the docket fees required for the filing of actions in court, both criminal and civil, shall be paid as contribution to the Assurance Fund," it added.
Estrada noted that the justice system is depicted by the blindfolded woman holding the scale supposedly symbolizing the impartiality, equality and integrity that should comprise the manner justice system is served.
"But it is, likewise, clear such symbol characterized the approximation that the system, at best, exerts to go nearest to true injustice. Thus, in reality, the justice system is far from perfect," he said in his explanatory noted of the bill.
"There will always be mistakes in its administration. And therefore, it is incumbent upon the state to make sure that discovery of errors in the justice it stands for be corrected," Estrada added.
