Lawyers, state witness and murder
At the end of the day, whether or not a co-accused should be allowed to turn state witness lies solely in the court’s discretion
Four top passers, perfect passing percentage. Could it get any better than this? I think so. There is no limit to excellence and with the quality legal education that they’re getting from their professors, it should not be long before graduates of the University of San Carlos College of Law surpass the achievement of Karen Mae L. Calam and her fellow new Carolinian lawyers in the 2016 bar examinations. In fact, I heard from USC Law professor Butch Gimarino that the 2017 batch has more honor graduates than Ms. Calam’s.
USC’s feat should serve as an inspiration to the other province-based law schools. We’re not inferior to anyone; we read the same laws and study the same books. In fact, we have had bar topnotchers from other Cebu universities like the University of the Visayas and the University of San Jose Recoletos in the past although Ms. Calam is the first to cop first place. The University of Cebu is comparatively a young law school but it has produced at least four top bar passers already.
If, as the young ones are wont to say, we all “level up,” we can look forward to more dominance by our graduates in future bar examinations.
Should Janet Napoles be allowed to turn state witness in the plunder and other cases arising from the misappropriation of billions of pesos in pork barrel funds? Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre says why not but Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales absolutely rejects the idea.
It is the justice department that preliminarily sifts through the evidence and determines whom to charge while it is the Office of the Ombudsman that prosecutes the case/s in the Sandiganbayan. Both offices can make their recommendations but at the end of the day, whether or not a co-accused should be allowed to turn state witness lies solely in the court’s discretion.
The discretion is, however, subject to certain conditions, one of which is that the testimony of the proposed state witness is necessary to obtain the conviction of the other accused. Aguirre apparently believes that Napoles meets this and the other (?) conditions.
He may be right insofar as the cases that have yet to be filed are concerned. Let Napoles be a state witness in these new cases then but not in those that are already pending because the court, in denying the petitions for bail of the accused, including Napoles, has in effect already made a preliminary finding that the evidence of guilt against them is already strong without any help from her.
The arrangement may seem strange but if the so-called “pork barrel queen” is really concerned that the truth come out and the legislators and other officials, who pocketed millions of government funds each but who still have to be charged, appropriately punished, then she should consent to it.Otherwise, she cannot avoid being perceived as not really interested in obtaining justice but only in trying to save her own skin.
That was murder. No, make it two successive bloody murders. Boston is a storied franchise but against Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, the Celtics look like clumsy schoolboys who have gotten lost in the woods.
I wish basketball had a Referee Stop Contest rule similar to the one that they have in boxing to spare the clearly beaten team from more bludgeoning.