Friday, June 24, 2005
Judge tests credentials of chemist
POLICE forensic chemist David Alexander Patriana again took the witness stand in yesterday’s leg of the Mandaue shabu laboratory case marathon hearings.
While stressing his “expert” credentials in drug identification and assessment before members of the prosecution panel on re-cross, he got scorched when Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Marilyn Yap fired a few questions from the bench.
Twice he admitted that he did not know the process involved in the actual manufacture of shabu.
Similarly, he admitted to not knowing the operation of the equipment involved in its making. He said his knowledge is limited to what he heard from his “classmates” when they all took the drug identification and assessment program recently.
Patriana, who was presented to corroborate the statements of the first prosecution witness, Chief Insp. Myrna Areola, still stood by the results of the laboratory examination he conducted on the substances seized in the “clandestine shabu laboratory” in Barangay Umapad, Mandaue City.
Lab tests
In one sample, the laboratory tests, which he said were reviewed and subsequently concurred with by his superiors, tested positive for liquid methamphetamine. The others were identified as essential chemicals or ingredients and precursors.
Patriana was the second of 22 prosecution witnesses to be presented in court.
Along with fellow forensic chemists Mutchit Salinas and Jude Daniel Mendoza, Patriana took the samples and did the laboratory analysis on the substances found by the police when they raided the shabu laboratory, located inside the Caps R’ Us warehouse in Barangay Umapad last Sept. 24.
He testified, among other things, on how Areola divided the shabu laboratory into three sectors and how he handled section three, the spot where the hydrogenation machine and the scrubber were located.
Bail
Eleven persons – one British, one Taiwanese, two Malaysians, four Chinese and three Filipinos – were arrested during the nighttime raid. Two others, the owners of the compound where the laboratory was found, were formally impleaded in the case last January but are now out on bail.
After Judge Yap declared him “excused,” the prosecution called their third witness – Mendoza.
Mendoza, who testified under direct examination by State Prosecutor Juan Pedro Navera, conducted the sampling and analysis of all substances located in his sector of the clandestine laboratory.
Introduced as the prosecution’s most “colorful witness,” Mendoza, with her makeup and hair dyed blonde, sported a conservative light-colored blouse and slacks as she took the stand.
This elicited smiles from the all-male lineup of accused – Siew Kin Weng, Liew Kam Song, Lin Li Ku, We Tiao Yi, Tao Fei, Liu Bo, Joseph Yu, Allan Yap Garcia, Joseph Lopez, Hung Chin Chang and Bao Xia Fu – who’ve been under detention since the night of their arrest. KNR
(June 24, 2005 issue)
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