Court decision goes against common sense

I wish to invite attention to the case of a friend and former UP dorm mate, which demonstrates how callous and meretricious our judicial system can be.

I have known him while we were in our early 20s. He was a shy type, a nobody to anybody who mattered; this may be the reason his case may already have been consigned to oblivion, the sheer injustice of it erased as if it never happened. He was allegedly involved in a rumble between his fraternity and a rival fraternity. His defense was, he was nowhere near “the scene of the crime.” The reason he was implicated at all has remained in the realm of pure conjecture; an accuser’s motive is, after all, a really fuzzy issue to go into. True, such defense (alibi) is weak, but that’s not the point I’m driving at here. So, he is now in the New Bilibid Prisons—for life (and already in his 40s!)—along with his brods for the death of another student belonging to the other fraternity (“SC upholds murder conviction of 5 UP fratmen,” Metro, 6/8/14). I simply could not believe it. I knew him to be so laid-back he, as the saying goes, couldn’t even hurt a fly!

So, out of inconsolable curiosity and brotherly compassion, I devoted quite a great deal of time to delve into the records of that case. Though not a lawyer, I know my basic law well enough. I used to do extensive research in the Court of Appeals while attending evening law classes. I am used to burying myself in heaps of paperwork. (But somewhere along the way, lawyering lost its appeal to me and I decided to pursue another career path. Lucky for me the Supreme Court cannot disbar me for venting my disappointment at a very unjust decision!) The myriad pleadings from the opposing sides were overwhelming, but let me cut to the chase.

As far as my friend is concerned, the case was, to my mind, really a no-brainer. Records do not lie. While his other coaccused had more witnesses/complainants to deal with who supposedly identified them at the trial, my friend had only one. Although numbers are not necessarily decisive, here’s the rub: Just minutes after the incident, that lone witness/complainant had told the responding policemen that he did not know who attacked him and his brods. He said exactly the same thing when asked by the attending physician moments later at the clinic where he was brought by the policemen for minor injuries. Then after about five days, with the assistance of lawyers in his fraternity, he changed his story: He knew the assailants and pointed to my friend as one of those who bludgeoned him. Shorn of too much legalese, that’s how simple the issue boiled down to: Was that newly contrived “positive identification” of him by a flip-flopping witness believable—“strong” enough evidence by itself to throw my friend in jail for the rest of his life?

In a nutshell, the high court’s decision gave no more than short shrift to the candid testimonies of the policemen and the physician as to what the complainant did say right after the incident. The “hearsay” nature of their testimonies amounted to nothing compared to the complainant’s, which yielded “first-hand information” because he himself was there in the midst of the fray! Thus, it declared that the testimony of the latter was more believable—never mind that he changed his story and never mind, too, that no other witness corroborated it! As against my friend, that was the long and short of it, period!

Pardon me, but I don’t need to be a lawyer to know that something about that ruling is not quite right! Does not common sense tell us that at the very least, that kind of testimony engenders very serious doubt as to its truthfulness? And when in doubt, are not the courts duty-bound to acquit? Lawyers call it the principle of “res gestae” by which, according to “well-settled jurisprudence,” a spontaneous utterance made by one during or immediately after a “startling event” (e.g., commission of a crime) is deemed more reliable, more “trustworthy” (i.e., more worthy of credence) than that made by him after having an opportunity to concoct or make up a story. Its spontaneity guarantees, to a very high degree, its veracity. In the ordinary course of human experience, can anyone really take that newly fabricated account hook, line and sinker? With absolutely no other evidence against my friend except that bare-faced “flop” from a “flip,” how in the world did that prove his guilt “beyond reasonable doubt”?

True that the Supreme Court may rewrite jurisprudence any way it wants, but, with due respect, may it rule against the plain dictates of common sense?

Marius V. Canonoy works for a transnational firm as a financial analyst with yearly stints in the United States, Canada and Asia.