Thursday, December 13, 2007 So: Lawyers, teachers By Michelle P. So Caught in the Net
THE situation was something journalists covering the law enforcement beat were not alien to. It was as common as re-bonded hair. What made it interesting was the police member involved.
She was not the policewoman stereotype, Amazonian and gray-dressed. She was pretty and sexy and dressed provocatively on- and off-duty, according to accounts of some Cebu police reporters. And PO1 Blaire Quezon was a law student.
She implicated her law professor in the bribery. She said he couldn’t say no to his “request” to hand over P50,000 to a fellow cop in exchange for a less serious charge against a female drug pushing suspect.
The law professor, identified in the subsequent story as lawyer Gines Abellana, had figured in a bribery case involving an assistant Cebu City prosecutor in 2002. I remember the lawyer’s name because he was in the news much of the time in February, March and April of 2002. I remember his pose (seated and smiling) and get-up (in a suit that looked good on him) in the picture that we ran to accompany the story.
Editors have a memory like an elephant. And most often, they remember the embarrassing moments, the ones the news sources wished they never were in. How often have I heard news sources gripe about some mortifying background that we put in current stories about them? And our photos, they cry, are hideous!
That’s why the background I have of Attorney Abellana is not flattering to him.
He reportedly had bribed Mary Ann Castro, assistant Cebu City prosecutor, with P10,000 cash in exchange for “going easy on the bail” of Nanan Gimenez, a suspect in large-scale drug peddling. Castro reportedly had denied soliciting money and Abellana had denied giving it to her. An investigation by the ombudsman had zeroed in on Castro and co-assistant prosecutors but had left out Abellana, a private lawyer and therefore outside its jurisdiction. The findings had shown Castro taking the money.
Five years later, he again landed in the news pages for an incident that bore some similarities of the one that caught media’s attention in 2002. Attorney Abellana, in Sun.Star Cebu’s follow-up report yesterday, refused to comment.
What I know about Attorney Abellana is limited to his being a lawyer in criminal cases. But if what policewoman Quezon said is true—that he was her professor in law school and that he had asked her to give the money to another policeman in exchange for a favor—Attorney Abellana’s moral ascendancy over Quezon and his other students is eroded or even lost. I hold teachers in high esteem because I see them as knowledge guides, except when they are the disoriented ones.
I am not blind to the fact that there are other teaching lawyers who employ tricks similar to what Attorney Abellana allegedly did or does. That’s the way it is among many trial lawyers, especially those who represent clients who are charged with heinous crimes.
As for Quezon, what she did was understandable but not excusable. Students try to stay in the graces of their teachers. I don’t know how she fared in Attorney Abellana’s class but I know that she makes the police look bad in the face of the courage of the slain PO1 Noriel Luage.
I feel sad for her and the police force, for the law students under Attorney Abellana. I need to get out of this cheerlessness. I need to shop.
