MANILA, Philippines — Detained Sen. Leila De Lima has taken her legal battle to exclude convicts from the list of witnesses in her drug case to the Court of Appeals.
In a 26-page Petition for Certiorari and Prohibition, De Lima asked the appellate court to issue a halt or temporary restraining order (TRO) against the order of Muntinulupa judge Lorna Navarro-Domingo—who has since inhibited from the case—from allowing convicts to testify in the government’s drug case against her.
The senator also asked the CA to nullify Domingo’s order that junked her plea, and subsequent appeal, to disqualify prosecution witnesses and enjoin them from testifying in the trial.
De Lima accused Domingo, judge of Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court Branch 204, of committing grave abuse of discretion when she junked her motion to disqualify 13 of the prosecution’s witnesses for being convicted of crimes with moral turpitude.
Convicts excluded from charge sheet
The senator specifically named the following inmates, whom she said are listed among the prosecution’s witnesses:
- Nonilo Arile: Murder, kidnapping
- Jojo Baligad: Murder
- Herbert Colanggo: Robbery with Homicide
- Engelberto Durano: Frustrated murder, murder
- Rodolfo Magleo: Kidnapping for ransom
- Vicente Sy: Illegal sale and delivery of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu)
- Hans Tan: Robbery, direct assault with murder
- Froilan Trestiza: Kidnapping
- Peter Co: Illegal sale and delivery of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu)
- Noel Martinez: Kidnapping for ransom
- Joel Capones: Homicide
- German Agojo: Illegal sale and delivery of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu)
- Jaime Patcho: Kidnapping for ransom
“Thirteen criminal convicts were not included in any of the said Informations (charge sheet), despite their admissions in their affidavits and testimonies during the hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on Justice that they all took part on the illegal drug trading inside the NBP, purportedly on the basis of the immunity granted to them as State Witnesses,” De Lima’s petition read.
“The SC has ruled that allowing criminals previously convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude to testify as state witnesses is arbitrary and a gross violation of the rules,” she stressed.
According to the Supreme Court, crimes of moral turpitude include robbery, murder, homicide, extortion and violations of the Dangerous Drugs Act.
‘DOJ has already turned them into State Witnesses’
De Lima has also filed complaints against Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra and his predecessor Vitaliano Aguirre II over the same issue, before the Office of the Ombudsman.
But Guevarra said last November 7 that to his knowledge, “no convicted person has been used as a state witness under Rule 119 against Sen. De Lima.”
He cited the Rules of Court in defining a state witness. “If he meets all the requirements under Rule 119 of the Rules of Court, the judge will discharge him from the case upon motion of the prosecutor and he may then testify against the remaining co-accused,” he further explained.
"They are just ordinary witnesses," Guevarra said. He later defined ordinary witnesses as "any other person who is not a party to the case at all."
But De Lima argued before the CA that under the Witness Protection Security and Benefits Program, the DOJ can turn them into state witnesses.
The act provides: "The certification of admission into the Program by the Department shall be given full faith and credit by the provincial or city prosecutor who is required not to include the Witness in the criminal complaint or information and if included threin, to petition the court for his discharge in order that he can be utilized as a State Witness."
“[P]recisely, they were not included in the information and can no longer be the subject of discharge by the court under Sec. 17, Rule 119 because they were already excluded from the information as state witnesses by the DOJ itself pursuant to sec. 12 of RA 6981,” she said.
'Arbitrary and gross violation of the rules and the law'
"Turning one who is a criminal convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude into a State Witness—whether by granting him immunity and excluding him from the Information pursuant to Sec. 12 of RA 1981 or by discharging him from the Information and acquitting him pursuant to Sec. 17 of Rule 119—is abirtrary and a gross violation of the rules and the law," she said.
"They cannot now abandon the legal basis they used to exclude from the Information the criminal convicts who already confessed to participating in the illegal drug trading in the NBP," her motion read.
The DOJ panel, led by Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Peter Ong, did not charge the inmates—whose testimonies were used in building up the case—with De Lima before Muntinlupa courts.
In a 52-page joint resolution issued by the DOJ’s prosecution panel in February 2017, the government requested that the illegal drugs cases against Herbert Colanggo, Engelberto Acenas Durano, Vicente Sy, Jojo Baligad and Wu Tuan Yuan alias Peter Co “be dismissed since they will be utilized as prosecution witnesses.”
"This is not even brilliant obfuscation. It is simply disingenuous argumentation, what we call in the vernacular as a ‘palusot',’” the senator added.
Domingo recused from the case on November 6.