The Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) said of the 256,927 criminal cases it handled for poor litigants in 2021, it secured favorable decisions in 208,380 cases of which 13,805 cases resulted in acquittals.
PAO Chief Persida V. Rueda-Acosta said that for 2021, the law firm for the poor and the underprivileged sectors in the country had an 86.48 percent favorable disposition rate.
On top of acquittals and favorable decisions, Acosta said that PAO assisted in the release of 76,364 persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) from various detention facilities in the country.
Those assisted to gain freedom from detention included 2,465 PDLs who had served their minimum jail terms, 7,799 whose cases had been provisionally dismissed, 1,384 whose preventive imprisonment had equaled to maximum imposable penalty, 21,207 who had completed their service of sentence, and 43,509 who had been freed for other legal reasons, she said.