The attempt to spring the Alabang drug pushers merely demonstrates how the legitimate safeguards of due process can be misused and how, in the classic words of Benjamin Cardozo, we have almost willed it to happen that “the criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.”
They could have pulled it off had it not been for a brave and steadfast Marine Maj. Ferdinand Marcelino, and once again, it took a heroic whistle-blower to stop them. Three young men were caught dealing in illegal drugs in separate operations in Alabang Village subdivision in Muntinlupa City and the Araneta Center in Quezon City on Sept. 20. By Dec. 2, two prosecutors had signed off on their release, and close to the Christmas holidays, their lawyer actually drafted the release order to be signed by Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez himself, and using the Department of Justice’s own letterhead!
The Department of Justice accused the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) of relying on weak evidence and committing procedural lapses: the “warrant-less arrest” was defective; they searched the suspects’ car without a warrant; they processed the evidence in the PDEA office rather than at the scene of the crime (a protective measure against the planting of evidence); and they did not charge or implicate one person who was with two of the suspects when they were arrested. The chief state prosecutor even warned the PDEA to release the suspects lest they be charged with arbitrary detention.
Indeed, that is how Justice Undersecretary Ricardo Blancaflor explains why he telephoned the PDEA to intercede in behalf of Richard Brodett. “I was only performing a valid and legal function by inquiring at the PDEA why a Dec. 2, 2008 resolution was not yet implemented three weeks after such was made.” In other words, it was an individual initiative to rectify what appeared as a systemic failing, except that his own boss finds it “irregular” since this matter fell outside Blancaflor’s assigned functions. “It is not illegal per se when you speak of illegality but it is irregular. In other words, you prepared a resolution for me to sign and I have not ordered you to prepare it,” Gonzalez said.
Worse, during the congressional hearing, it was revealed that another suspected drug pusher who was arrested in San Juan City on Monday this week had actually been released by Wednesday morning. The prosecutor explained that when the PDEA officer was attesting to the criminal complaint, she couldn’t present any ID whatsoever, no official PDEA tag, no driver’s license, no ATM card—far too convenient, if you ask me, almost a perfect set-up for the dismissal of charges.
During the legislative hearings, our congressmen saw this as merely a problem of closer coordination between two bungling government agencies that keep on shooting the other in the foot. For that, their solution is to tighten management and secure more equipment and funding.
Others see this as but another case of graft and corruption. For that, their solution is to investigate and punish. But our institutions are so flawed that it will all end up in a whitewash. As I write, the Philippine National Police says it is ready to let the “euro generals” off the hook as soon as the purloined millions are returned! And that is the main law enforcement agency talking! Sure we might have providentially found individual heroic whistle-blowers to pin down individual wrongdoers, but it is the system that lets us all down.
What the Alabang, Araneta Center and San Juan episodes actually tell us is that our law enforcers are getting mixed signals. Certainly we as citizens are wary of abusive police officers and would insist on strict procedural safeguards. But there are also many times when those safeguards are misused to absolve the guilty. For many Filipinos, the solution is practical. Throw the book against the police when they run after leftists and anti-Arroyo activists; throw the book away altogether when they run after those darned “durugistas” [drug users], and let them burn in hell! Practical, yes, but unprincipled. We cannot have differential standards.
The problem actually lies in the prosecutorial approach, in how the prosecutors see their role. Is it to find every possible excuse to absolve the accused? Or is it to vindicate, in this case, their executive duty to carry the legislative ban on the use and traffic in drugs?
I once witnessed a debate between a foreign and a Filipino prosecutor. It was in an international training conference that followed the inquiry by the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings. The foreign prosecutor, a woman, was wondering why Filipino prosecutors merely waited for the police to produce the evidence, only to throw it out if unsatisfactory. She asked: Why don’t you actively direct the police and tell them what evidence you will need, and how to correct the deficiencies of the evidence available? The Filipino prosecutor replied: One, getting evidence is the job of the police, not mine. Two, if I become more actively involved in gathering evidence, I thereby lose my impartiality. The foreign prosecutor was aghast, and explained that the prosecutor’s job is in fact not neutral. It is to prosecute and win a conviction. We are historically so afraid of persecution that we have taught our prosecutors that to be passive is a virtue.
The San Juan prosecutor surely could have found other ways to ascertain the identity of the PDEA officer. The mechanical attitude—“no ID, no charges”—betrays a lack of caring, of solicitude, to the sworn duty to punish crime. And for the Alabang boys, it was a buy-bust operation! They were caught in the act. All the Department of Justice needs is “probable cause.” What more evidence do the prosecutors want?
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