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Friday, June 30, 2006
Discord rocks high court
BENEATH a united front, a major dispute erupted between Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban and at least two associate justices who challenged his admission of “judicial error” in the SC’s decision affirming the execution of Leo Echegaray on Jan. 4, 1999.
Panganiban earlier said that the tribunal failed to follow certain doctrines before erroneously meting out the death sentence on Echegaray, the first man to die by lethal injection since the re-imposition of the death penalty law in 1993.
In a confidential letter to Panganiban dated June 15, 2006, Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said Panganiban’s statement could erode the people’s faith in the judiciary.
“Sadly, the Chief Justice’s charge and continued insistence that the court, in Echagaray’s case, committed a ‘judicial error’, even if untrue, could ‘shake the people’s faith in the judiciary’. The court will have to painstakingly rebuild its credibility from hereon and pray that the same unfortunate incident will not happen again,” he said.
Maintaining that the court did not err in the Echegaray ruling under then prevailing doctrines on death cases, Carpio added that Panganiban’s admission is a ‘self-inflicted blow on the judiciary’s credibility’.
Among the doctrines Panganiban mentioned was the fact that Echegaray should have only been meted with reclusion perpetua because it was proven during the trial that he was not “a father, stepfather or grandfather” of the victim, as alleged in the case, but a mere lover or common-law spouse of her mother.
He said Echegaray should not had been executed because Republic Act (RA) 7659 or the now-abolished death penalty law, prescribed the proof of a “father-daughter relationship”, a special qualifying circumstance for the imposition of capital punishment.
But Carpio said the doctrine cited by Panganiban in his controversial speech before Free Legal Assistant Group (Flag) lawyers would have been impossible to follow because it had been non-existent at the time the SC handed down the decision on the Echegaray case.
He also said when the SC decided on Echegaray, it followed all the then prevailing doctrines applicable to the case, noting that judicial doctrines evolve or change over time.
“This shows that the court decided Echegaray correctly. The most recent doctrines do not necessarily make past decisions erroneous, for the old doctrines often re-emerge to prevail again,” he said, adding that it was only after the SC decided on Echegaray that stricter new doctrines were imposed on death cases.
“To hold that the court in Echegaray should have applied a future doctrine would require the court to possess the power to prophesy. No court or judge possesses such power. Just recently, the court dismissed a judge who claimed to possess such a power,” Carpio reminded the Chief Justice.
He further said the SC’s conclusive findings based on its appreciation of the evidence is that Echegaray, whom the victim referred to as ‘Papa’, is either her father or stepfather thus proving what was alleged in the Information.
He also cited a June 25, 1996 unanimous decision of the court in Echegaray wherein not one of the 15 justices who signed the decision dissented from the judgment finding the accused guilty of the crime of raping his then ten-year old daughter.
“Not one of the 15 justices, including you (Panganiban), claimed that what was alleged in the information was not proven. To say that the court ‘forgot’ about the basic rule of ‘allegata et probata’ is to charge your 14 learned colleagues in that court with gross ignorance of the law, resulting in the wrongful death of the accused,” Carpio claimed.
“On your part, it is a written and public admission of such a grave offense. A trial court judge charged and convicted of a similar offense would face certain dismissal from the judiciary,” he added.
For her part, Associate Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago also told Panganiban that his view allegedly “generated unpalatable comments on the individual justices and the court as an institution”.
All magistrates were furnished copies of the exchange between Carpio and Panganiban, who even stressed the need for the confidentiality of their letters, citing a verbal agreement reached among justices last June 13 during the signing of an agreement between the SC and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to keep mum on the subject.
But all throughout the exchange of missives, Panganiban remained adamant that he was merely expressing his personal view that even justices are not infallible in terms of evaluating legal cases.
Panganiban stated that he never intended to put blame on the court or on individual justices who voted for the imposition of the capital penalty upon Echegaray.
“Again, my main point is simply that, fallible as humans are, members of the court make occasional mistakes; thus, imposing and irreversibly carrying out the death penalty should have no place in our statute books,” he said.
He reiterated that had Echegaray been kept alive after the new doctrines on death cases have taken effect, the convict would have been entitled to the same benefit of a modification of his death sentence and given a chance to reform.
In answering Carpio’s arguments, Panganiban stated that the June 25, 1996 per curiam decision of the Court was not yet final and executory because it only became so with the promulgation on Feb. 7, 1997 of the SC’s ruling denying the defense’s motion for reconsideration.
He also noted that further discourse on his admission may now be academic because Congress has finally abolished the death penalty and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has already signed it into law before flying to meet Pope Benedict XVI last Tuesday.
As his parting words, he said: “I don’t wish to engage you in an endless debate. You have your view, I have mine. As we always say, let’s just agree to disagree without being disagreeable.” (ECV/Sunnex)
(June 30, 2006 issue)
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