Friday, June 06, 2008 Seares: Habeas ccorpus and the bar girl By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
IT started with the kind of behavior that kills love between consenting adults and erodes public respect for law enforcers.
Three men, said to be members of a police unit, were drinking at a bar called Rising Angel. One cop lusted for the girl serving drinks and wanted to date her. She refused.
Later, according to the bar manager's account, the cops came back with more men and forcibly took the girl with them on the pretext she was a minor exploited by the bar.
Eventually, the girl was saved from the clutches of lascivious cops, an irony not lost on the public that thinks the agency
protects citizens from criminals.
The girl sought refuge at DSWD.
The bar manager, who saw she was losing an angel that turns customers on, filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus against workers of DSWD and the NGO International Justice System.
Roles reversed
Was the girl unlawfully restrained?
She was illegally taken by the cops, which wasn't the point of the habeas corpus however. It was her custody under DSWD
that was assailed by the habeas petition.
Funny how roles were seemingly reversed: DSWD that protected the girl from dirty cops, the original bad guys, became the "villain" in the habeas writ.
Habeas corpus is an inquisition of the Government "to fix a person," which the court did by ruling that she wasn't held by
DSWD against her will and being already adult, she could go where she pleased.
She's free. She can go home to Mindanao. Or return to the bar that profits from alcohol and young and nubile girls and maybe fall prey again to horny cops.
