Man sentenced to 203 years in prison gets Arroyo pardon

Talk about presidential pardon. A man sentenced by the Sandiganbayan to a jail term of 203 years walked scot-free after receiving a conditional pardon from President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on the same day he was supposed to start serving his life-long sentence. Jaime Ponce de Leon was convicted of 27 counts of graft and sentenced to a total of 203 years imprisonment by two divisions of the Sandiganbayan did not get to serve a day in jail term after he was granted a conditional pardon on April 12, 2007. Sandiganbayan records show that on July 7, 1989, Ponce de Leon was found guilty of conspiring with officials of the Ministry of Public Highways’s (now the Department of Public Works and Highways) Bais City Highway Engineering District in ghost road projects in Negros Oriental. The antigraft court sentenced Ponce de Leon to eight years in each of the 14 graft cases or a total of 112 years. The ruling was affirmed by the Supreme Court on June 25, 1990. Despite his conviction in 1989, however, Ponce de Leon remained at large. On December 15, 1998, the Third Division also convicted him, along with seven co-accused, of 13 counts of graft, and was sentenced to seven years in prison for each count or a total of 91 years. Petitions for certiorari filed by the defendants were dismissed by the Supreme Court on March 10, 1999. After going into hiding for many years, Ponce de Leon surprised the antigraft court last March 5 when he filed a motion submitting himself to voluntarily serve his sentence. Based on an order dated April 11, 2007 signed by Associate Justice Godofredo L. Legaspi, chairman of the Third Division, Ponce de Leon was escorted to the New Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa City on April 12. Once there, personnel of the Sandiganbayan Sheriff Office were presented a copy of the conditional pardon signed by President Arroyo and Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita. An inspection of the document showed it was issued that same day and had preceded Ponce de Leon's arrival by only a few hours. The pardon wrote off Ponce de Leon’s entire 203-year jail term, but maintained that Ponce de Leon was barred for life from holding any position in the government and was ordered to pay penalties amounting to P1.16 million. - GMANews.TV