Two Tales of Injustice: Acquitted but Never Free

There are stories that never make it to the front page. No scandal, no blood, no political intrigue. Just pain—quiet, persistent, almost invisible.

One was my former cellmate in the Quezon City Jail. He was a young man then, barely out of college, whose only mistake was being in the wrong fraternity, at the wrong time. He was implicated in a fraternity rumble incident. The case was weak, the evidence flimsy, but the courts took their sweet time. He stayed in jail for five years and four days. No bail. No reprieve. He lived in an overcrowded cell, ate tasteless rations, and waited—for hearings, for decisions, for justice that never hurried.

He was acquitted. Eventually. He is now gainfully employed, has a family of his own, and wears a quiet dignity forged in suffering. But the punishment has not ended. His parents had mortgaged the last of their land—naisanlang lupa. Twenty-three years after his release, he still pays off debts from his detention. The courts found him not guilty. But the system found a way to mark him for life.

Then there’s my neighbor from my hometown. Charged at the height of the Duterte drug war. A malicious case, no real evidence, just the word of a supposed asset. Non-bailable. Again, five years in jail. His family sold anything of value, pawned jewelry, drained savings, and borrowed from relatives who themselves had none to spare. The court finally acquitted him. But what was returned? Not the lost time. Not the dignity stolen. Not the dreams that were quietly buried while he waited in a cell.

Two men. Two lives. Acquitted. Yet condemned.

The Supreme Court has ruled—there shall be compensation for those who are wrongfully convicted. But not for those who were detained and acquitted. Because, technically, they were never convicted.

Let that sink in.

You can be arrested, denied bail, locked up in a cell like an animal for half a decade, be dragged through a snail-paced trial, declared innocent, and still, you are not entitled to a single centavo of compensation. Not even an apology. Because in the eyes of the law, nothing happened. You were not convicted. Ergo, no harm done.

But harm was done. And is still being done.

The slow trial process is not just inefficiency—it is cruelty by delay. Each postponement, each rescheduled hearing, each absent witness is a small knife twisted slowly into the gut of the accused. Judges know this. Prosecutors know this. Jail officers see this every day.

And many of them have tried to fix it. There are paralegal officers who track trial schedules like their lives depended on it, jail officers who coordinate with courts to hasten release orders, and judges—yes, some of them—who push for continuous trials, who personally check the calendar to ensure that no one stays longer than the law demands.

But systemic rot resists individual effort. And until the system acknowledges its own failings, the problem will persist.

We ask the Supreme Court—please reconsider your ruling. Consider the reality of prolonged detention. The errors of police. The overreach of prosecution. The apathy of bureaucracy. Consider that jail is jail, whether you are eventually convicted or not.

And to Congress—pass a law. There must be compensation for those detained and later found innocent. There must be justice not only in the end, but during the long, punishing middle.

You had the right to detain us, because you believed we had committed a crime.

But when you find that we didn’t, you have a duty—no, a moral obligation—to compensate. For the shame. For the hunger. For the birthdays missed and the children who grew up without fathers. For the land that was sold, the dreams that were deferred, the lives that were never the same again.

Justice delayed is justice denied, yes. But justice denied and unacknowledged? That is injustice enshrined.

We were not just acquitted.

We were robbed.

And we deserve to be made whole.