“Tanan circumstantial, no eyewitness kinsa gyud, puro circumstantial. But the family would like to file homicide, though we already informed them that very weak ang homicide. But so be it, padayon gihapon.”--Regional Police Chief Debold Sinas, Feb. 23, 2019
A complaint for homicide was filed last Saturday (Feb. 23) by police against Nel Spencer Tiu, the boyfriend of Ashley Abad who died of drug overdose the day after the pre-Sinulog party concert last Jan. 19.
A statement from the family said the filing of the complaint is the “beginning of our fight for justice” for the 19-year-old nursing student and “for other youths who may fall prey to drugs, betrayal and deception.”
Not helping
A rousing call, yet not jubilatory. The family of the victim even has reason to worry over the case. Two high officials--President Duterte and Debold Sinas, Central Visayas police chief--issued statements that hardly help the “fight for justice,” assuming, of course, that “justice” to the Abad family means locking up the suspect for a long time.
• Last Wednesday (Feb. 20), Duterte publicly disclosed that Ashley was the one who possessed the party drug ecstasy that led to her “sordid death.” Citing “forensics examination,” the President said Ashley “was the one who was actually texting another girl” they’d share one pill as the other “reserba niya para sa kanyang boyfriend...”
• Three days later, on the day the complaint was filed with the prosecutor’s office, General Sinas said the evidence was purely circumstantial, the complaint for homicide was “weak,” and they filed the charges “to appease the Abad family.”
Credible sources
Duterte and Sinas won’t testify and their opinions about the case are not evidence. But, one, they virtually cleared Tiu in the forum of public opinion and, two, they are credible as they had access to evidence on which they must have based their statements.
Duterte gave scant details but he sounded as if Ashley was to blame. Yet possession of the pills didn’t conclusively mean she was the one who procured it or she cooked up the party idea. The pills could’ve been left with her. Her phone message about sharing the ecstasy is not, as lawyers put it, “inconsistent with the fact” that someone else might have instructed her on how the pills would be apportioned.
Circumstantial, direct
The general in effect said police have no direct evidence, “puro lang circumstantial evidence.” That sounded as if that kind of evidence cannot convict. The Rules of Court requires the same quantity of evidence, proof beyond reasonable doubt. And the evidence may be direct or circumstantial: “evidence of facts and evidence of circumstances from which existence of the facts may be inferred.”
Prosecutors though take the case to court more confidently if police supply them with direct evidence. That may have nourished the thinking among the police that circumstantial evidence, by itself, cannot convict.
Coming from the police boss no less, Sinas’s comment on the kind of evidence plus the explanation that they’re only filing the homicide case “to appease” the family must not be giving happy thoughts to the aggrieved members.
Own private quest
Prospects are not great at the city prosecutor’s office, if the evidence is what Duterte and Sinas said it is. And police have closed the case, shutting the door for more evidence from the PNP side.
The Abads and their friends may have to wage the quest for “justice” on their own, through private investigation and their own lawyers.
They are doing it for Ashley--and, yes, the other youths similarly preyed on by drug traffickers.