MANILA, Philippines—It's the turn of former Batangas governor Jose Antonio Leviste to counter the prosecution's rebuttal evidence as his trial for the murder of his aide, Rafael De Las Alas, continues Wednesday.
Leviste is set to present the first of his "surrebuttal" witnesses before Judge Elmo Alameda of the Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 150, who is hearing the one-year-old trial.
On July 21, the accused submitted a list of 44 people he intended to present in court following the conclusion of the presentation of rebuttal evidence by Senior State Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco.
Among the witnesses were former National Bureau of Investigation director Epimaco Velasco, the father of the senior state prosecutor, Makati chief-of-police Senior Superintendent Gilbert Cruz, and Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption leader Dante Jimenez.
Also listed were the names of De las Alas' widow, Teresita, and children, Dinna, Christian and Allan Christopher, as well as unidentified representatives of TV networks ABS-CBN and GMA, and other media representatives.
Oddly enough, the list included a dead person: former audio engineer Jonathan Tiongco, whose name was brought up by Velasco in court, and who died in a road accident in June last year.
Velasco had said Tiongco, who previously made headlines when he tried to discredit the "Hello Garci" tapes which purportedly contained conversations between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and an election official, had sent him text messages supposedly asking him to go lenient on Leviste.
Leviste, in an earlier interview, said he wanted to present Velasco's father because Velasco had said in court that Leviste had met with the elder Velasco in an attempt to influence him, a charge Leviste denied.
He had said that even though the testimonies of prosecution witnesses were immaterial and irrelevant, they were still "lying," and he would present his own witnesses to demolish their lies.
Leviste is on trial for shooting dead De las Alas on January 12, 2007 in his office at the LPL Tower in Legaspi Village, Makati City. He confessed to the killing but said he did it in self-defense.
