SUPREME Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno emphasized the need to beef up security measures in the Cebu City Hall of Justice.
“No citizen, regardless of what he does for a living, deserves to suffer such a thing as he (lawyer Jonnah John Ungab) had,” the chief justice told a forum hosted by Cebu City’s law schools.
Before noon last Monday, a man ambushed Ungab outside the courthouse after he had attended the hearings of some clients, including suspected Eastern Visayas drug lord Rolando “Kerwin” Espinosa Jr.
Sereno said she discussed with Executive Judge Gilbert Moises the need for additional security in the building where Cebu City’s courtrooms have been based since March 2014.
The chief justice also offered the Ungab family their condolences, but declined to discuss the issue at length because it will end up with the court at some point.
“Everyone should be alarmed,” she said. “It’s so sad. It’s so horrific. Another lawyer’s life has been taken.”
The attack on Atty. Ungab came up during the discussion in the Road to Judicial Reforms forum that Chief Justice Sereno attended yesterday afternoon in the Sacred Heart Center.
In a speech in January last year, Chief Justice Sereno said that reforms in the judiciary were being overshadowed by “the daily accounts of unsolved killings.” (GMD)