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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Editorials: Defending rogues
Public officials are not only worried about lawyers defending suspected traffickers. They are publicly criticizing their choice of clients.
Notably, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Rep. Antonio Cuenco consider them the enemy because lawyers often succeed in springing drug pushers from jail.
Normal reaction. Didn't many of us hate to see ex-senator Rene Saguisag and ex-Supreme Court chief justice Andres Narvasa defending former president Joseph Estrada? The public wondered how they could be lawyers of a suspected rogue.
Most of us, however, keep silent. Tomas and Cuenco don't: they openly castigate the lawyers.
How it works
Yet, this is how the justice system works. Every person accused of a crime is presumed innocent and entitled to a lawyer. It's essential. If the accused cannot afford to hire one, the court appoints a lawyer for free.
What the officials apparently want is for lawyers to refuse to help suspected drug merchants. Bumbling lawyers can be tolerated, not high-caliber counsel for the defense.
The reality though is that most drug traffickers have money to hire the best legal help and underpaid state lawyers are often not equally skilled.
Lawyers cite their duty under canons of legal ethics. They may refuse to defend a drug pusher but law practice is competitive. If one lawyer won't accept a case, 100 others will.
Lure of money
The mayor and the congressman are right in saying money has a lot to do with lawyers' behavior. They are wrong in thinking that lawyers are obsessed with nothing else.
Public officials can appeal to lawyers' duty as lawyers and as community members.
As lawyers, they are also officers of the court ("a distinguished appellation," jurist Fred Ruiz Castro once wrote). They are bound to follow ethics and not obstruct justice.
Lawyers who bribe fiscals and judges or tamper with evidence for their clients are surely not the court officers Castro had in mind.
As lawyers, they are also members of the community who must appreciate what havoc monkeying with judicial process can wreak.
Top guns
Public officials can ask lawyers who defend drug traffickers to be ethical, or is that contradictory? Failing that, the officials can expose lawyers' violations and try to get them disbarred.
Meantime, Tomas and Cuenco can find ways to lure top guns to prosecute drug cases and match defense firepower.
It is war, is it not?
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (February 15, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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