The recent guilty verdict handed down by the court proves beyond all shadow of doubt that the Philippines' justice system is working.
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| https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1089147 |
The guilty verdict against key suspects in the Maguindanao massacre case handed down on Thursday showed that the justice system in the Philippines is working, an official of the Presidential Human Rights Committee Secretariat (PHRCS) said.
“The judicial process may have taken quite some time, but justice has triumphed, with our government, under the Duterte administration, remaining true to its obligation to fulfill the human rights of those concerned,” Undersecretary Severo Catura, PHRCS executive director, said in a statement sent to the Philippine News Agency (PNA).
“The mechanisms have effectively worked in the victims’ favor, and this is what human rights is all about,” he added.
Catura said the Maguindanao massacre case has defined the human rights situation in the Philippines and even allowed detractors to accuse the government as a purveyor of impunity.
“That is farthest from the truth. The dictum that every person who is charged with a crime is deemed innocent until proven guilty remains an anchor of the Philippine justice system. And we’re talking of more than a hundred people indicted in this gruesome incident," he said.
”What seems to be disregarded is the fact that the government has upheld everyone’s right to a fair and public hearing,” he added.
Catura said the conviction of 43 personalities can be considered “a milestone in human rights history in the Philippines”.Wow! The guilty verdict handed down by the court in this singular case proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Duterte administration cares about human rights and the right of everyone to a fair and public hearing. The justice system is working.
Except the Palace says this case is an example of the serious flaws in the justice system.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1204022/despite-maguindanao-massacre-conviction-palace-notes-serious-flaws-in-justice-system |
The Palace on Saturday said there are still “serious flaws” in the country’s justice system that needs to be rectified despite the resolution of the decade-old Maguindanao massacre case.
Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said that while the efforts of the prosecution in the case are commended, “an analysis of the court’s judgment shows that 10 years of what could have been productive lives of fifty-six acquitted accused have been wasted in incarceration.”
Panelo said that during their time in jail, their families have become dysfunctional as they bear the stigma and humiliation attached to being accused of involvement in the 2009 mass killing that horrified the world.
“This is an injustice that cannot be countenanced nor continue. It must not find print ever again in the pages of our history as a nation,” Panelo said in a statement.
Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes on Thursday sentenced eight members of the Ampatuan family led by former town Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. and 20 others to life imprisonment without parole for the murder of 57 people, including 32 journalists.
The judge acquitted more than 50 police officers and other members of the Ampatuan family, citing a lack of evidence, while 15 people were given 6- to 10-year prison terms as accomplices.
Panelo noted that a major cause for the “aberration” is the filing of charges before the court “even if the evidence presented before the investigating public prosecutor cannot sustain a conviction of an accused of a crime to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“The hasty and heedless filing of an information is due either to the faulty appreciation of evidence by — or the fear of — the investigating prosecutor to be subjected to an administrative sanction or get a reprisal from the complainant if the case is dismissed at the preliminary investigation stage,” Panelo said.
These cases, Panelo said, are not isolated as he noted the hundreds of similar pending cases.
“The blindfolded Lady Justice symbolizes an impartial proceeding without regard to the social and political status of those haled before the mighty and unforgiving arm of the law, uninfluenced by the torrent of adverse people’s judgment,” Panelo said.
“The government, forever unaffected and unmoved by the infectious winds of public opinion, must pursue and protect this ideal,” he added.
Further, Panelo said that aside from the years of innocence wasted for the acquitted persons, hours of effort have also gone to waste.
“This is one lesson we must all learn lest we repeat the same grievous error at the cost of liberty and honor of the innocents,” the spokesperson said.What Panleo is decrying is the fact that this case took 10 years to resolve. During that time 56 people were incarcerated who ended up being acquitted. During that time their families have been greatly affected and a whole decade, which adds up to 560 years, of potentially productive years has been wasted.
The reason is that charges were filed hastily and without due appreciation of the evidence at hand which is done because the prosecutor fears the case might be dismissed before it reaches trial resulting in no justice and administrative sanctions for himself. Panelo says this is not an isolated case.
Indeed we read in the news often daily accounts of cases finally reaching resolution after years of lingering in the courts. DeLima is certainly the most high profile prisoner right now who has been in prison for nearly three years with no end in sight. That means no trial and no resolution of the case. Truly in the Philippines there is no such thing as a swift and speedy trial. The courts are severely backlogged.
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| https://news.mb.com.ph/2019/11/29/doj-starts-decongestion-of-backlog-of-over-10000-cases/ |
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has started a “decongestion project” meant to slash and reduce the backlog of over 10,000 cases with pending petitions for review.
“This should make a dent on the number of unresolved petitions in the docket,” said DOJ spokesman and Undersecretary Markk Perete on Friday, Nov. 29.
Petitions for review are filed before the DOJ’s Office of the Secretary to appeal the rulings prosecutors made on cases which were either dismissed or approved for filing of charges in court due to findings of probable cause.
The spokesman said the DOJ begun its “decongestion project” back in August to address the backlog of pending petitions for review.
“We started this since about three months ago,” Perete told reporters.
Recently, Guevarra revealed that when he got appointed justice secretary back in April 2018, he was faced with a huge backlog of petitions for review.
“When I assumed the position of Justice Secretary, over ten thousand cases – in fact estimates peg the number at close to fifteen thousand – have yet to be resolved,” Guevarra disclosed during a conference of the Prosecutors League of the Philippines (PLP) held in Manila.
“That such a huge backlog exists is worrisome,” he lamented.
“That the appealed cases of those denied justice have for so long languished in our docket constitutes a travesty which I hope to address,” he stated.
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| https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/06/14/953927/courts-congested-over-1-million-cases-yearly-nscb |
The Philippine judiciary faces serious difficulties in addressing case backlogs as lower courts are congested with over a million cases every year, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) revealed on Friday.This number of one million is from 2013. With more cases coming in each year are we to believe that these cases have been cleared up since then? Doubtful. Especially when the DOJ admits they alone have 10,000 cases backlogged.
NSCB Secretary General Jose Ramon Albert said that from 2005 to 2010, lower courts were continuously confronted with heavy volume of caseload, with an annual average of 1,059,484 cases or equivalent to an average of around 4,221 cases per working day.
He said this backlog of cases in lower courts has been increasing over the years since the Regional, Municipal, and Municipal Circuit Trial Courts (MTC) posted low annual disposition rates from 2005 to 2010.
Albert revealed that while the total inflow of cases in the lower courts has been declining from 457,146 in 2005 to 385,067 in 2012, the total outflow of cases has likewise been on a downtrend, from 487,605 cases in 2005 to 382,957 in 2012.
"Hmmmm. I wonder if this suggests that lawyers are prolonging the trial process, or that judges are taking too long to make judgments, or that judges just have too many cases to resolve, or all of the above," Albert said in the latest issue of Beyond the Numbers.
Another problem with the Philippines' justice system, as exemplified by the Maguindanao Massacre case, is the use of private prosecutors.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/625305/private-public-prosecutors-in-maguindanao-massacre-trial-at-odds-over-strategies |
Is it really a rift between the public and private prosecutors in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre case, or among the private lawyers themselves?
Two private prosecutors in the Maguindanao are pointing to deep-seated differences with the state prosecutors, which are supposedly affecting the panel’s legal tactics in the case.
However, another outspoken private lawyer has contested this, saying the conflict is actually between two private prosecutors and the rest of the panel.The better question is why is private prosecution allowed? Why isn't all prosecution done by the state? Here we read that the use of both private and public prosecutors and their subsequent quarrels is one reason the case was delayed for so long. Private prosecution is absolutely one of the worst, if not the worst, aspects of the Philippines' justice system. It is the complete opposite of justice.
Right in line with private prosecution is the ridiculous fact that in some cases no charges will be brought against criminals unless the victim files a complaint. But this is something the state should do.
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| https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/275559/parents-set-to-file-murder-case-against-jealous-man-who-killed-their-daughter |
A murder case is still being readied against the 27-year-old man, who allegedly shot dead his common law wife after he had an argument with her in their house in Sitio Mahayahay, Barangay San Vicente in Liloan town in northern Cebu on Saturday, December 14.
Police Master Sergeant Jason Gayo said the parents of the victim, Bianca Paige Bayang, 25, were hoping that they could file the murder complaint on Tuesday (December 17) because they were still processing her death certificate which would be needed in the presentation of the case in court.
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| https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1204292/rising-pnp-concern-chinese-kidnappings |
Pogo-related kidnappings grabbed public attention in mid-December when the video of 28-year-old Pogo worker Zhou Mei went viral. Zhou is shown screaming for help as her abductors pulled her into a gray van. CCTV footage collected by the Makati police showed the van driving around the building where she lives in the city’s business district several times before she was kidnapped. The team of Makati police chief Col. Roberto Simon has identified Zhou’s kidnappers. One has left the country and three others remain at large. Simon is frustrated by the refusal of Zhou and her husband to file a criminal case that would allow his team to pursue the suspects.Both of these cases are maddeningly ridiculous! The parents of a murdered daughter have to file a criminal case? The police know who the kidnappers are but cannot pursue them because the victims refuse to file a criminal case? That puts more Chinese in danger of being kidnapped and tortured. It is an absolute travesty of justice that the state does not file criminal charges against suspects in all cases.
The final reason, at least the final reason I will mention, that the Philippines' justice system is broken and not working is that judges and lawyers are routinely killed. Now the judge in the Maguindanao Massacre case will be given a tighter security detail.
Police officers are still providing security for Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221, after she handed down on Thursday the long-awaited ruling on the Maguindanao massacre case after 10 years of trial.
Brig. Gen. Debold Sinas, acting director of the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO), said close-in security personnel are still deployed for Solis-Reyes, while some police officers are stationed near her residence and are authorized to conduct random checkpoints.
(Our agreement with the Supreme Court administrator is the security detail will continue until the time that she feels the situation is back to normal and she no longer has apprehensions.)
Filipinos do not respect the law. They do not respect the decisions judges make and they do not respect the fact the all criminals have the right to defend themselves. That is why judges and lawyers get assassinated.
In the very first article mentioned in this post I quoted the following:
In the very first article mentioned in this post I quoted the following:
“That is farthest from the truth. The dictum that every person who is charged with a crime is deemed innocent until proven guilty remains an anchor of the Philippine justice system. And we’re talking of more than a hundred people indicted in this gruesome incident," he said.
That is a total lie.
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| https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/05/19/alleged-narco-politicos-waived-right-to-presumption-of-innocence-panelo |
The Commission on Human Rights earlier said it recognizes that the list is meant to ensure that only law-abiding candidates get elected, but it also reminded the administration that "presumption of innocence is a Constitutionally-guaranteed right."
The body urged the government to instead file cases against the alleged narco-officials.
Panelo, however, said some rights under the Constitution "can be waived."
"These candidates who are involved in drugs, to my mind waived the right -- to such right -- of being given presumption of innocence," he told ANC.
"Why? They know they are involved there, they run for public office and it's fair game. You open yourself to criticism as well as exposure of your involvement to anything illegal," he added.That is straight from the Palace. Duterte has never contradicted that pronouncement from Panelo. Hard to believe they are lawyers. But not really. They are Filipino lawyers and they are part of the problem which is the Philippines' broken justice system.
When he was still a prosecutor, President Rodrigo Duterte said there was one tactic that helped Davao City authorities when going after criminals.
"We planted evidence. We arrested persons but we released them, [then] telling him that it was this person who squealed on him. And then when he goes out for the killing, then we said that it was this fellow who really did it, who did you in," the President, who was city prosecutor before becoming Davao City mayor, said in an early morning press conference on Sunday, August 21.
"We first planted the intrigues so that we would know... from where they came from," he said.
The President, in his statements during the early morning press briefing, implied that this strategy is being used by the police now, but at the same time denied their involvement in extrajudicial killings.
"We say it’s not the work of police to be wrapping people with plastic and [putting] him in the bag. That is not a job of the police. I just told [them] that one bullet will do. Why do you have to wrap it? I said [don't] waste your time," he said.
"I have learned a lot during my prosecution days," he said.
Don't be fooled. A broken clock is right twice a day. Just because justice was meted out in the Maguindanao Massacre case does not mean the Philippines' justice system is working. Far from it.
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