3 LAWYERS JOIN DEFENSE TEAM OF CHIEF JUSTICE
THREE lawyers have been added to the legal team of Chief Justice Renato Corona, whose impeachment trial will start on January 16.
According to Supreme Court spokesman and Court Administrator Jose Midas Marquez, the three lawyers are former Justice Undersecretary Ramon Esguerra, former law dean Tranquil G.S. Salvador 3rd and Harvard Law School graduate Karen Jimeno.
The three will also act as spokesmen during the impeachment trial in the Senate.
Esguerra was once the general counsel of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP).
Salvador is the former dean of the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Pasay law school and was the former president of the Ibp-quezon City chapter. He is a practitioner of the Romulo Mabanta law office and is currently teaching law at the University of the Philippines
and Ateneo de Manila University colleges of law.
Newly married Jimeno is a UP graduate and finished her Masters in Law from Harvard University. She used to be with the Quisumbing, Torres, Evangelista law offices.
“She’ll be spending her honeymoon at the Senate after being married [on] Saturday,” Marquez said.
The SC spokesman denied that the lawyers were leaving the Corona camp. He clarified that former Ateneo law school dean Eduardo delos Angeles remained part of Corona’s team and had attended all of the lawyers’ meetings.
Retired Court of Appeals Justice Hector Hofilena also volunteered but did not appear during the meetings. Ernesto Francisco Jr. also volunteered but withdrew from the legal team.
“It is his own volition that he withdraw from the team. He felt [that] it would be best if he would not be part of the team for the defense panel. It would be better for the defense that he withdraw his appearance,” Marquez said.
Corona’s camp also on Tuesday asked the Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, to discipline the members of the House prosecution panel for publicly disclosing documents allegedly constituting proof of ownership of a condominium unit by the Chief Justice.
In a seven- page manifestation, Corona, through his counsel Jose Roy 3rd, said that the insinuation of the prosecution team that the Chief Justice illegally acquired the property ran “roughshod over the peremptory language of the rules of procedures on the impeachment trials promulgated by the Senate.”
Roy was referring to the January 3, 2012 press conference, during which Rep. Niel Tupas Jr. of Iloilo province, the chief prosecutor in the impeachment complaint, presented documents concerning a 305.5- square meter unit at The Bellagio in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City (Metro Manila) that the prosecution panel planned to use as evidence in the trial.
“CJ Corona strongly manifests his objection to the prosecution’s unbridled dissemination of information or documents, which may not even be admissible in evidence relevant to the case,” the lawyer added.
On Monday, lawyer Fernando Perito asked the Senate to cite Tupas and other members of the prosecution panel for contempt for prematurely disclosing evidence against Corona.
Meanwhile, the prosecution team said that it would continue to gather evidence against Corona during the trial.
“We now have the evidence that can convince the Senator-judges to vote in our favor, but we will keep on gathering evidence [and], witnesses, as the trial goes on,” Deputy Majority Leader Romero Quimbo of Marikina City (also in Metro Manila) told reporters during the weekly Ugnayan sa Batasan News Forum.
Quimbo said that this strategy worked during the impeachment trial of former President Joseph Estrada.
“We won’t stop [looking for evidence and witnesses] because more would be willing to testify if they would see that this is not a lost cause,” he added.
Quimbo, however, conceded that the House prosecution team had a hard time enlisting witnesses and securing the help of private lawyers because they and their respective law firms had pending cases before the Supreme Court.