Decongesting our courts

Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Diosdado M. Peralta was in town last Thursday to deliver a full-day talk about the “Revised Guidelines of Continuous Trial in Criminal Cases” at the Radisson Blu hotel in Cebu City.

At 67, Justice Peralta’s stamina and passion to share his absolute expertise in criminal law and the rules of criminal procedure leave his audience, composed of lawyers and court officers, amazed.

Peralta is once again among those in line to replace Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin who is due to mandatorily retire on October 18 upon reaching the age of 70. Talks are rife that Justice Peralta could be the next chief justice, but the likelihood of that happening all depends on President Duterte who is the appointing authority.

No doubt, Justice Peralta is competent and ripe for the job. His record speaks for itself: City prosecutor in Laoag and Manila before joining the judiciary in 1994 as Regional Trial Court judge in Quezon City where he presided over the trial of heinous crimes and drugs cases.

He was appointed to the Sandiganbayan in 2002 by then President Arroyo and six years later he became its presiding justice until his appointment to the Supreme Court in 2009. According to confirmed data from Wikipedia, Justice Peralta was a recipient of the Special Centennial Awards in the Field of Criminal Law conferred by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the Supreme Court in 2001, and the Judicial Excellence Awards in 2002.

But his most important contribution thus far is in steering the continuous trial system as chairman of the Supreme Court’s Special Committee on Speedy Trial.

The slow turning of the wheels of justice has been a perennial problem in our country and this has severely affected our people and the confidence of investors in the rule of law. This problem on court congestion has long caught the attention of the international community. The seminar last Thursday was, in fact, supported by the American Bar Association – Rule of Law Initiative (ABA-ROLI) and USAid, proof that they are trying to help us overcome this problem.

In his talk, Justice Peralta steered his audience through the intricacies and the arcs and knots of the Revised Guidelines of Continuous Trial in Criminal Cases which has been implemented since September 2017. His grasp of theory and practice in criminal procedure was truly outstanding.

I really wish that every litigation lawyer, judge, court personnel and other stakeholders in the criminal justice system be endowed with the same clear-cut yet profound understanding of legal procedures so that our wheels of justice could turn faster.

Basically, the guidelines simplify many aspects of criminal procedure by rationalizing the theoretical foundations behind many rules in criminal procedure. For example, the guidelines prohibit many pleadings or motions that only serve to delay the case but are actually pointless from the standpoints of all parties involved.

I won’t delve into the details but to name a few of the other reforms under the guidelines: All hearing dates are now pre-scheduled during the arraignment, the arraignment and pre-trial should be done on the same day, postponements should not be allowed or, if allowed, should fall within the prescribed period to finish a trial.

So far the results of the reforms are promising. Despite the sheer inflow of cases into our criminal justice system plus the number of criminal cases still pending which total to 599,074 criminal cases as of June 30, 2019, our courts, through the revised guidelines, have stemmed the tide of a runaway increase in the number of cases.

The remaining balance of criminal cases are still increasing every year because of the sheer inflow of cases, but the ratio of case outflow to case inflow has increased from 40 percent in 2017 to 73 percent as of the middle of this year. Ideally, it should be over 100 percent so we could start to lower the yearly balance of cases; unless we add more court branches for better distribution of cases, that is also ideal.

The data show that this may happen within the next couple of years. To give you an idea, according to data from the Supreme Court, case inflow jumped from 51,915 in 2017 to 180,149 in 2018, yet the case outflow also increased from 20,518 in 2017 to 119,347 in 2018.

That’s a promising development in efforts to decongest our courts.