Better overzealous than less prepared

‘The Batangas congressman prosecutor was dapper in his looks and confident in his appearance but sadly speaking, he was, to me, less zealous in his preparation.’

Few months into my practice of law, I appeared at the Court of First Instance (now Regional Trial Court) in a northern city as counsel for an accused. It being a murder case and because I was a trembling neophyte of a trial advocate, I prepared thoroughly for the case. At the height of my cross examination, the judge, now deceased, gently banged his gavel for me to stop. He then invited me and the private prosecutor to his chamber. After a brief exchange of pleasantries inside his room, the magistrate said, “Had you stopped before your last two questions I would have been convinced to view with consideration the cause you are advocating.” Then silence followed as if to allow the lesson to sink into my psyche.

It was that frame of overzealousness that I would have wanted the prosecutor to display while conducting the cross examination of Mr. Demetrio Vicente, witness for impeached Supreme Court Justice Renato Corona, the other day. The Batangas congressman-prosecutor was dapper in his looks and confident in his appearance but sadly speaking, he was, to me, less zealous in his preparation. From my point of view, he missed to convince me overwhelmingly to the cause he was advocating.

1. Mr. Vicente presented a deed of sale purporting that he bought certain parcels of land from the lady of the chief justice. In the course of his testimony, he showed how close he was in terms of blood relations and in other social connections to the chief justice. Perhaps, if only to add a new dimension of their closeness, the document showed that the vendor, Mrs. Corona, and the vendee, the witness, both obtained on the same date their respective residence certificates which they used in the document of sale. They both got their cedula in Quezon City. But, they had the document notarized in Makati by a notary public who the prosecutor showed to be without commission to notarize any document in Makati. Alas, the prosecutor could have highlighted these points in his cross-examination for the viewing public to consider.

2. The prosecutor missed to show to the public why the vendor and the vendee had yet to go to Makati after obtaining their cedula in Quezon City. Why was there such need? The way Mr. Vicente answered other questions, it was clear to me that the notary public was unknown to him. Some questions could have clarified to the minds of the impeachment tribunal that the notary public was specially chosen by the husband of the vendor, the impeached chief justice. It would have mattered that the choice of the lady subscribing officer was that of the vendor in the light of a later fact that she had no commission to notarize documents.

3. Defense witness Mr. Vicente claimed that after starting with only one equipment, he had a flourishing heavy equipment rental at the time he ceased operation in 1990. In fact he insinuated that his earnings were substantial by referring to a present conversion rate of a peso to a dollar. When he stopped his business he sold a lavish house in a plush subdivision for more than P3,000,000.00. The proceeds of this sale appeared to be the source of his money to buy the Corona properties at a little over P1,000,000.00. The public prosecutor probably was not trained in simple mathematical computation. He failed to elicit from the witness why he claimed he had no more money to pay for the registration of the property he bought which only cost a few thousand pesos when the difference between his sale of his property from the amount he paid the Corona assets was more than P2,000,000.00. 4. It perhaps was the prosecutor’s highest respect for the defense counsel that he allowed the latter to run unleashed with questions that were no longer proper for re-cross. The retired justice scored points by raising redirect examinations which were not touched by the cross. Lawyers would call those questions improper. Unfortunately, the failure of the prosecutor to raise timely objections made them proper!

How I wish the presiding officer of the impeachment tribunal gently banged his gavel and called the prosecutor and the defense counsel to an imaginary chamber where he could have advised the prosecutor that it was better to be overzealous than less prepared.

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