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Saturday, September 03, 2005
Seeks separate bail trial for Tan saught
By Karlon N. Rama
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
The defense panel yesterday turned up the heat in the on-going hearing of the anti-drug case against Calvin Tan and the 13 other men impleaded over an alleged shabu laboratory in Mandaue City.
The lawyers continued their grilling of the prosecution’s forensic expert, Senior Insp. Mutchit Salinas.
They highlighted what they argued were lapses in getting samples of the items allegedly discovered during the Sept. 24, 2004 raid.
They also pounced on her inability to interpret the results of a gas chromatograph mass spectrometry test performed over a set of samples.
When they were done with Salinas, William delos Santos, Tan’s lawyer, formally declared that he has filed an urgent motion requesting that Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Marilyn Lagura-Yap separately try his client’s pending petition for bail.
Cross
Salinas returned to the witness stand yesterday and was cross-examined by lawyer Vicente Fernandez II, followed by the re-direct examination of State Prosecutor Archimedes Manabat and the re-cross examination by defense lawyers Eric Carin and Allan Legaspi.
Yap excused Salinas after the re-cross examination. Upon the prosecution’s request, he issued summons to Supt. Lina Sarmiento, of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in Manila. She then attended to Tan’s pending pre-trial and pending petition for bail.
Delos Santos, in pushing for separate trials, said the prosecution’s evidence against the 13 other accused in the case has “no bearing” on the charges Tan is facing and his petition for bail. The prosecution has already begun presenting the case, in which Salinas was the fourth witness.
Detained
“My client has to come to court and listen to testimonies that do not involve him and all the while stay detained in prison,” he said.
Manila based prosecutors Manabat and Juan Pedro Navera objected to delos Santos motion, citing first the difficulty they will incur in facing a separate trial.
At this point, delos Santos got them into naming their witnesses against his client - members of the Hong Kong police, the Hong Kong customs bureau, the Anti-Money Laundering Council, a certain Mortezza Tamaddoni and one other person.
He also got them to declare in open court that the nature of the testimonies is to prove that Tan financed the shabu laboratory
while in Hong Kong.
Then delos Santos said: “If the prosecution only intends to prove that Calvin Tan financed the alleged laboratory from Hong Kong, then this hearing may be an exercise in futility. Does the jurisdiction of the Honorable Regional Trial Court of Mandaue City exercise jurisdiction over alleged illegal acts done in Hong Kong?”
Yap had to put a stop to the escalating exchange.
“If you are asking that now, you are putting this judge in a spot because it might project the image that this court has already pre-judged the case. The court would rather do the more prudent gesture of allowing the continued presentation of witnesses and testimonies,” she said.
While directing the prosecution to submit its comment, she said that any move to divide the trial into separate settings will be futile.
“That would duly burden this court,” she said.
Objection
Prosecutor Manabat, for his part, objected to the move for separate trials and argued that Tan is charged with acting in conspiracy with all other accused.
He also said the prosecution panel will be unduly burdened with having to attend to another trial. He and Navera go home to Manila after every hearing.
Delos Santos disagreed.
“If the state prosecutors cannot make it, they can always delegate. They have the entire Mandaue City Prosecutor’s Office at their disposal your honor. The City Prosecutor of Mandaue is always attending the hearings of this case. The state has much resource in that they even went to Hong Kong just to arrest my client. And now they say they have no time to attend to his case?” delos Santos said.
Delos Santos, though, just asked the court that the prosecution modify their lineup of witnesses so that the next six settings would involve witnesses whose testimony will already touch on Tan and his alleged involvement in the case.
Yap admitted that she cannot do anything about that because “the prosecution has full authority over their witnesses at this stage of the proceedings.” (KNR )
(September 3, 2005 issue)
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