Sandigan quashes Napoles’ bid to suppress Luy’s evidence
The Sandiganbayan Third Division has quashed the attempt of businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles to suppress all of the pieces of evidence presented by whistleblower Benhur Luy in the plunder case she is facing together with former Senator Juan Ponce Enrile.
The anti-graft court denied Napoles’ Motion to Suppress Evidence, in which she prayed that all of the evidence provided by Luy, her former employee, be “suppressed for being inadmissible for any purpose in any proceeding in any court of tribunal under Section 18 of R.A. 10175 or the Cybercrime Law.”
Napoles argued that the evidence, ranging from their office’s Daily Disbursement Records, Summary of Rebates, draft endorsement letters, project listings, memorandum of agreements, and working financial plans, should be deemed as inadmissible as they are “fruits of the poisonous tree.”
She said Luy is not a reliable witness as he is a “self-confessed criminal” who illegally obtained documents from JLN Corporation’s iMac computer. Napoles added that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) should have applied for a search warrant in order to determine whether or not the documents obtained by Luy indeed came from their company’s computer and were not just fabricated.
Napoles’ motion was junked in the resolution penned by Associate Justice Ronald B. Moreno on Feb. 15, since the court said that the evidentiary and probative value of Luy’s testimonial and documentary evidence will be better threshed out during trial.
“Verily, it could not be said at this point that Luy had illegally accessed the files of JLN Corporation. In the same manner, to label Luy as a ‘hacker’ at this stage of the proceedings would still be premature,” the resolution stated.
The court added that there was no need for the NBI to apply for a search warrant since Luy, a private individual, handed over the files and contents of his external hard drive to them.
“Considering that the NBI was able to access the file through the external hard drive owned by Luy, the reliance of Napoles on the exclusionary rule under Section 18 to suppress the subject evidence is misplaced,” the court explained.
Presiding Justice Amparo M. Cabotaje-Tang and Associate Justice Bernelito Fernandez concurred in the eight-page resolution.
Napoles is facing one plunder and 15 graft charges before the anti-graft court’s Third Division because of the reported misuse of Enrile’s priority development assistance fund (PDAF), which the former senator allegedly endorsed to the bogus non-government organizations (NGOs) owned by Napoles in exchange for kickbacks.