Yesterday the Senate sitting as Impeachment Court ruled against introduction for paragraph 2.4 of the articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona. Paragraph 2.4 states that the respondent, Chief Justice Corona, is “suspected and accused of having accumulated ill-gotten wealth”. The memorandum submitted last Tuesday by the defense panel to the impeachment Court last Tuesday claim paragraph 2.4 is “irrelevant, improper and violative of (Chief Justice) Corona’s constitutional rights”
The defence is partly victorious in caucus held yesterday morning because the impeachment court favored the prosecution in its decision to allow the latter to present evidences for paragraph 2.3. Paragraph 3 of the Second Article of Impeachment accused Chief Justice Corona for not including some of his properties in his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net worth (SALN). The defense requested to delete from the record any and all of the evidence presented by the prosecution pertaining to paragraphs 2.3 and 2.4 due to lack of ultimate facts.
Defense lawyer Tranquil Salvador III said the entire discussion on Article II shall revolve around the presentation of Corona’s SALN. He said that the prosecution team is trying to amend the second article without the required promulgation of the entire House of Representatives. He added that the prosecution is conducting the determination of the probable cause along with the impeachment proceedings. He added loopholes of the rushed impeachment articles are being revealed while the case is being heard in the impeachment court.
On the other hand the house prosecution panel claimed that evidences,such as Income Tax Return and bank records could not be obtained without existence of a valid circumstance identified by the law such as when an impeachment case was filed. In return the prosecution castigated the defense for turning the proceedings into a game of technicality. They cite the then Associate Justice Renato Corona’s decision on Marcos’s ill-gotten wealth saying that “ (Supreme) Court has seen fit to set aside technicalities and formalities that merely serve to delay or impede judicious resolution. In that decision, Corona cited Alonso vs. Villlamayor, “A litigation is not a game of technicalities in which one, more deeply schooled and skilled in the subtle art of movement and position, entraps and destroys the other. It is rather a contest in which each contending party fully and fairly lays before the court the facts in issue and then, brushing aside as wholly trivial and indecisive all imperfections of form and technicalities of procedure, asks that justice be done upon the merits. Lawsuits, unlike duels, are not to be won by a rapier’s thrust.”
Pinoy Pedestrian 