Friday, October 06, 2006 Atty. Glo raps Tony, judge By Karlon N. Rama Sun.Star Staff Reporter
SEPARATE administrative complaints were filed yesterday against two congressmen and the trial judge presiding over the drug case against 11 men allegedly behind the operation of the shabu laboratory in Mandaue City.
Lawyer Gloria Lastimosa-Dalawampu filed the complaint before the Supreme Court and charged Reps. Antonio Cuenco and Roque Ablan Jr. of the House committee on dangerous drugs with gross ignorance of the law and grave misconduct.
She asked the High Tribunal to impose “the appropriate disciplinary actions” against the respondents.
The Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge was likewise accused of the two offenses on top of a charge for violations of the new code of judicial conduct.
The Supreme Court disallows the publication of complaints instituted against magistrates. But the narrations in the separate complaints against Cuenco and Ablan identify the judge as RTC Judge Marilyn Yap.
Dalawampu, in an interview after the filing, said the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over all three complaints because all three are lawyers.
Cuenco, in a separate interview last night, described the complaint as “absurd” and declared that Dalawampu is “going berserk” defending a “losing case.”
“She’s getting rattled. It’s obvious that she is losing this case,” he told Sun.Star Cebu.
Central to Dalawampu’s complaint is the role the two congressmen played in the amendment of the information the Department of Justice originally issued against the respondents.
The amendment, which followed a process that Dalawampu describes to be illegal and unconstitutional in her complaint, resulted in the inclusion of her client, Calvin de Jesus Tan, as an accused in the case.
The inclusion, in turn, resulted in his extradition from Hong Kong where he was arrested for a separate drug possession case in September 2004.
Dalawampu said Cuenco, Ablan, Supt. Amado Marquez of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) and a lawyer, went to the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center last Sept. 30, 2004.
That was a day after the information impleading the original 13 accused—Joseph Yu, Hung Chin Chang, Siew Kin Weng, Liew Kam Song, Lin Li Ku, Bao Xia Fu, Wu Tiao Yi, Tao Fei, Liu Bo, Allan Yap Garcia and Joseph Lopez, and warehouse owners Andy Ng and Richard Ong, reached the court.
Once there, she said, they interviewed Allan Yap Garcia and Joseph YU without bothering to inform the men’s lawyer. The interview was even recorded by a news crew that Cuenco and Ablan brought with them.
On the same day, they then issued a joint affidavit that was executed before Assistant City Prosecutor Felixberto Geromo of the Office of the Mandaue City Prosecutor, narrating how Yu identified one Calvin de Jesus Tan as the financier of the alleged drug-manufacturing laboratory in Umapad, Mandaue City that was raided last Sept. 24, 2004.
The joint affidavit was attached to a letter, addressed to the City Prosecutor of Mandaue, asking that an amendment be made to the information “in order to implead as an accused Calvin de Jesus Tan.”
“The handwritten note allegedly executed by Garcia, which Rep. Ablan and Supt. Marquez admitted to be an extra-judicial confession, was taken by Cuenco, Ablan and Marquez in violation of Garcia’s constitutional rights to be assisted by counsel and to remain silent. Thus, as a consequence, (the confession) is a fruit of a poisonous tree (and) is inadmissible in court,” Dalawampu said.
The affidavits signed by Cuenco is hearsay, she pointed out.
“Both Reps, Cuenco and Ablan, being lawyers, cannot be ignorant of the law and procedure in criminal investigation and prosecution, and that of the constitutional rights of an accused,” she declared.
Moreover, Dalawampu said, the amendment requested in the letter was approved by RTC Judge Yap, “with the fastest record time known to herein petitioner”—20 minutes.
A government prosecutor for many years before entering private practice, Dalawampu said that a preliminary investigation should have been made before the amendment because Calvin Tan was not a detention prisoner.
In fact, he wasn’t even charged with anything prior to the amendment of the information.
She also accused Cuenco and Ablan of “knowingly encroaching into the domain of the executive department and the judiciary in blatant disregard of the time-honored doctrine of separation of powers” and revealed how they take front seat in hearings.
Dalawampu also ascribed liability on Judge Yap, an erstwhile colleague at the Office of the Cebu Provincial Prosecutor, for causing the amendment.
Cuenco, in reaction, denied the allegations and maintained that he and Ablan “were only doing their jobs.”
He confirmed visiting the jail and speaking with one of the accused but sees nothing wrong with it.
“She’s blaming us for doing our jobs? Does she want us to side with criminals instead?” Cuenco said.
He said the validity of the amended information was already passed over by the judge when she ruled to issue a warrant against Tan.
“If she wants to question that, then she should question that and not hit at us,” Cuenco said.
“We tried to assist in the prosecution of the case because it’s part of our job. When I went to Hong Kong for the extradition, was that wrong too?” he said.
And while he admits that the committee on dangerous drugs is a law-making body, not an investigative or prosecutorial one, he maintains: “Congress doesn’t only have legislative powers, it has an oversight function. What that means is the power to insure that the laws we craft are faithfully implemented.”
