That’s not how it works

President Duterte’s gofers at the Department of Justice (Secretary Menardo Guevarra and his public/state prosecutors) may have really gone overboard and risked ridicule just to ingratiate themselves to the man who wields the power to appoint them to more lucrative sinecures.

By filing those ill-conceived motions for the issuance of alias arrest warrants against Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV in the courts where the coup d’etat and rebellion cases had long been dismissed, they practically flushed everything they learned in law school, not to mention common sense, down the toilet.

Elementary is the rule that when a criminal case is dismissed by a court, nothing more is left to be done, and no orders can be issued by that court except only in pursuance of that disposition.

Without the cases against Trillanes being formally ordered “revived” first through a motion for that specific purpose (which would entail long-winded debates on double jeopardy), how on earth did the DOJ prosecutors expect the courts to take them seriously?

Sure, the motion in the coup d’etat case has been set for hearing on Sept. 13, and Guevarra said it means that the “case has, in fact, been revived” automatically (“DOJ hounds Trillanes, turns to another court,” 9/8/18).

He expects the same thing in the rebellion case. But, seriously, that’s not how it works, as any lawyer should know.

The hearing on that motion is just a matter of judicial courtesy, as the court is required to deal with anything filed with it formally.

As obtuse logic goes, bar second-placer Guevarra’s take on that scenario really takes the cake!

MARIUS V. CANONOY, [email protected]