By Daisy Catherine L. Mandap
This issue we again print a contribution from Mario delos
Reyes, one of our most prolific and best-informed contributors, who just
happens to be in Stanley Prison, serving a life sentence for murder.
Mario has been in jail for nearly 25 years. He had hoped
that given his exemplary record in prison he could be freed shortly after spending
20 years in the maximum-security prison, but this did not happen.
Under Hong Kong’s laws, life-termers like Mario could apply
with the Long-Term Prison Sentence Review Board to give them a fixed sentence
so they could eventually be set free. And normally, such applications are made
when a long-term prisoner has passed the 20-year mark.
A case in point was local man Ho Tung-sing, who was arrested
last May for his involvement in a brazen robbery in Tsim Sha Tsui. It was later
revealed that 60-year-old Ho had been involved in a series of violent robberies
three decades ago for which he got 17 life sentences. But following a review,
his indeterminate sentence was fixed at a minimum of 20 years, and as a result,
he was released in 2014.
Mario has been trying for the past five years to get the Review
Board to also hear his plea for a fixed term, to no avail. In the last hearing
of his application in July last year, the Board said it was convinced that the
period he had served was “insufficient in all the circumstances to warrant
consideration for early release.”
This was despite the many testimonials submitted by various
people urging for Mario’s early release, including Catholic Chaplain Patrick
Colgan and several other leaders from the church, civil society and other
sectors, including this writer.
Fr. Colgan said the Board’s decision that Mario had not
served enough jail time was “astonishing,” given his spotless record in
detention and his positive behavior and demeanor.
“Until when will the period served be deemed to be
‘sufficient’? What internationally recognized criteria are used for this? It is
quite bewildering to both inmate and those, like chaplains, to assist you and
the CSD in his rehabilitation, to be offered such a statement, with no reasons
given?” said Colgan in an impassioned letter he sent to the Board.
His frustration was understandable, for there could be no
better model prisoner than Mario. Not only has he managed to stick to prison
rules during his long confinement, he has also put his time inside to good use,
reading all materials he could lay his hands on, and taking up all the free
courses offered to inmates.
“Kung may law course lang na offered, siguro abugado na ako
ngayon,” (If a law course was offered, I would have been a lawyer by now), he
said wryly in one of the many letters he has sent us through the years, all
done in his neat, cursive handwriting.
Mario’s compassionate nature is also shown by his effort to
cheer up female prisoners, mostly those jailed for acting as drug couriers.
Through his encouragement, a number of them have also submitted articles to us
to speak about their ordeal, and to warn others about the dangers of getting
involved in the drug trade.
But beyond Mario’s good nature and achievements inside jail,
one is pricked more by the thought that he could have been unfairly sent away
for a murder he did not commit.
High Court Judge J. Stuart Mooore, who presided over Mario’s
trial in 1993, said in a letter dated Sept 1, 1995 that “a verdict of
manslaughter might have been recorded by a more merciful jury against these
defendants (Mario and another) on the basis of a joint enterprise falling short
of the intention necessary for murder.”
Clearly, the trial judge himself was not convinced that
Mario and his co-accused had committed murder; that the jury, had it been more
merciful, should have given a verdict of manslaughter, for which a 7-year jail
term would already be on the high side.
A veteran court interpreter who was at the trial had
confided many years ago that she was not convinced of Mario’s guilt. But she
was reasonable enough to admit it was the jury which had to decide on the case,
and not anyone else.
To this day, Mario who is now 61, is adamant he was not the
one who stabbed to death the Filipino victim in that gang brawl in Saikung. So
resolute was he in denying any culpability that he rejected his lawyer’s
suggestion that he plead guilty to manslaughter so he could get off with a much
lighter sentence.
But his once fierce proclamation of his innocence is rarely
heard nowadays. Having done jail time for a quarter of a century, all he wants
now is to be free again, and do things many people have come to take for
granted, like using a mobile phone and a computer, or even just to feel the
breeze from outside prison blowing in his face again.
Mario has suffered long enough. He should be freed.
