No longer a surprising nonresponse from SC
I always make it a point to read Ramon Tulfo’s hard-hitting columns. That guy really has guts! In the April 9 issue of the Inquirer, his piece, “Appeal to bubbleheads an exercise in futility,” referred to the case of a quadriplegic who was convicted of rape!
Taking up the cudgels for the accused (whose arms and legs were paralyzed and had to be carried by two people to move around), Tulfo urged the magistrates to please use just a modicum of common sense: If there was any sexual intercourse at all, the penetration could only have happened on the initiative of the woman!
That he got nowhere with his remonstrations against that patently unjust conviction is no surprise. Even the Supreme Court can be so indifferent or “manhid”—too proud to admit it can err, really feeling like “gods” already! The case of People vs Feliciano (“Court decision goes against common sense,” Opinion, 2/9/15) is a case in point. All appeals to common sense just fell on deaf ears. Sentenced to life imprisonment, an innocent man is now wasting away in jail on account of a ridiculous decision that gave unqualified credence to the lone testimony of a flip-flopping witness.
Under normal conditions (i.e., in the absence of any other evidence), that kind of testimony can never rise, even from a nonlawyer’s point of view, to the level of “proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt”!
—ULYSSES BERMUDEZ UY, [email protected]
