PHNO-HL: DEFENSE: CJ's 'GOOD FAITH' IN THE LAW CLEARS HIM OF GUILT

DEFENSE: CJ's 'GOOD FAITH' IN THE LAW
CLEARS HIM OF GUILT

MANILA, MAY
29, 2012 (STANDARD) by Macon
Ramos-Araneta - THE defense lawyers on Monday asked the Senate impeachment court
to reject what they called the grand plot of President Benigno Aquino III and
his allies to oust Chief Justice Renato Corona and acquit him because he did not
betray the public trust as charged or commit a crime.
In his closing arguments, defense counsel Eduardo Delos Angeles said the
President had repeatedly declared he wanted the chief justice removed, and that
the Executive branch had used its full powers to interfere in the impeachment
proceedings.
"Regrettably, we have witnessed the unusual rubber-stamping by the majority
of the House of Representatives who never even read the Articles of
Impeachment," Delos Angeles said.
"The blitzkrieg endorsement of the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate was
principally undertaken by the party-mates of the President."
Delos Angeles made his statement even as lead defense counsel Serafin Cuevas
said there was no ground to impeach Corona as a result of his non-disclosure of
his dollar accounts in his statement of assets.
He said he saw no case or proceeding questioning the validity of the Foreign
Currency Deposits Act stating that foreign currency deposits may not be
disclosed.
"Unless pronounced unconstitutional, it remains valid," Cuevas said.
Another defense counsel, Dennis Manalo, said the prosecution may not question
the supposed suspicious movements of Corona's dollar accounts.
There were movements in the accounts as Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales had
testified, but the prosecution failed to present any witnesses to testify that
Corona accepted bribes. Delos Angeles said the verified complaint filed before
the Senate against Corona originally contained eight Articles of Impeachment.

But after the senator-judges warned the House prosecutors as a result of
their slapdash presentation of their case in the opening days of the trial, the
prosecutors informed the impeachment court that they were dropping five of the
eight charges against Corona and leaving only Article 2, Article 3 and Article
7.
To further bolster the conspiracy between the Executive and the other
government agencies, the Justice secretary threatened the other Supreme Court
Justices with impeachment, Delos Angeles said.
He said the Land Registration Authority then falsely listed 45 pieces of
property allegedly owned by Corona, while the Bureau of Internal Revenue
presented confidential income tax returns and started investigating the chief
justice and his family.
The Anti-Money-Laundering Council looked into the bank accounts of the chief
justice without a predicate crime or court order.
The Ombudsman exaggerated and testified that the chief justice had 82 bank
accounts and $10 million to $12 million in deposits.
"The cadence of their actions imply a conductor," Delos Angeles said.
He appealed to the senator-jurors to acquit Corona.
"What we have here is a situation where the chief justice, consistent with
his practice for the last two decades, assumed that his reliance on the letter
of the law could not be wrong," he said.
In other words, he said, the chief justice could not be made answerable for
his interpretation of the law unless the Supreme Court ruled otherwise or the
legislative amended the law.
"To repeat, there is no liability for an erroneous interpretation of the law
when made in good faith," Delos Angeles said as he noted that Corona had been
unwavering in his conviction that the Foreign Currency Deposits Act provided
absolute confidentiality to dollar accounts.
He said Corona had not been charged with treason, bribery, graft and
corruption or other high crimes for which impeachable officials may be removed
from office.
Article 2 of the Articles of Impeachment accuses him of not disclosing his
statement of assets, but Delos Angeles said they had painstakingly shown that
the pieces of property supposedly belonging to the Chief Justice were not
actually his and therefore need not be disclosed.
But Corona disclosed his peso holdings and deposits. The other peso accounts
did not belong to him but were either owned by his children or held in trust for
Basa Guidote Enterprises Inc. or as part of the common fund from his mother.

"The chief justice relies on the basic principle that what he does not own,
he should not declare as his asset," Delos Angeles said.
"It is therefore submitted that he cannot be held liable for culpable
violation of the Constitution." he said. With Joel E.
Zurbano (Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on
/2012/May/29)



Chief News Editor: Sol
Jose Vanzi

© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE
NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved





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