Will Supreme Court leave ‘beaten path’ because it’s Estelito Mendoza saying so?

In his Nov. 16 column, former chief justice Artemio Panganiban pointed out that Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, detained because of a plunder case against him, has filed a “novel and unusual” petition in the Supreme Court to nullify the order for his arrest without bail. His lawyer started by arguing that such arrest is a blatant violation of his client’s constitutional right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Nothing new there really.

Enrile’s counsel then let loose the biggest cannons in his arsenal: (1) In capital offenses (punishable by “life imprisonment”) like plunder, bail can only be denied if the “evidence of guilt is strong.”

Commonsensically, such determination can only be made after, not before, hearing the prosecution’s evidence. Or put differently, the horse should come before the cart, and not the other way around.

The Supreme Court just got it all wrong all along. (2) Nonetheless, mitigating circumstances have the legal effect of lowering the penalty. Enrile’s very old age and voluntary surrender are undisputed facts, and therefore the penalty should be lower and render him eligible for bail outright.

To be sure, Enrile’s lawyer is not the first to deploy such arguments. My mother (who was a bar topnotcher herself) has grown tired of repeating them to no avail. The trial courts just ignored them. On appeal, the Supreme Court just swept them under the rug. I myself often presented those views in our law classes but law professors remind us to just stick to the beaten path—if we want to pass the bar!

This time around, probably, the honorable justices of the Supreme Court would be more receptive and accommodating. After all, Enrile’s lawyer is—ta-daah!—Estelito Mendoza! Abangan!

—GABBY M. M. AGUILLERA,
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