Conviction, vindication
The wheels of Lady Justice continue rolling in this land, belying Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Renato Corona’s earlier prophecy of a judiciary doomsday exacerbated by his impeachment trial at the Senate.
One reason the judicial system did not founder is that few court employees, in Cebu City at least, bothered to interrupt their work or waste time hanging posters that decried Corona’s trial as an attack on the whole judiciary.
The posters arrived at the Palace of Justice from a mysterious source, whom we hope authorities will identify to ensure that people’s money was not spent printing propaganda for the apolitical department.
In Cebu, justice was served in the conviction of Kenyan national Asha Atieno Ogutu and vindication of Cebu City Sports Center security guard Joselyndo Jabagat.
A Lapu-Lapu City court found Ogutu guilty of smuggling three kilos of shabu into the country last Sept. 29, 2011, and sentenced her to life imprisonment.
The Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor, meanwhile, threw out qualified theft charges against Jabagat over the loss of P1.6 million in funds belonging to the Sinulog Foundation Inc.
In the shabu case, the court didn’t swallow Ogutu’s testimony that she had never seen illegal drugs in her life until agents of the National Bureau of Investigation, who were tipped off about the delivery, arrested her at the Mactan Cebu International Airport.
Defense lawyer Ricardo Amores said they will ask the Supreme Court to review the decision.
Ogutu’s case was open and shut.
She owned the suitcase where the drugs were hidden, even if she claimed that a friend who had arranged for her “holiday” in Cebu may have slipped it in. A warrantless search at the airport was justified, given the serious and slippery nature of drug deals.
In contrast, Jabagat the security guard was not arrested with evidence of theft in his hands.
Asst. Cebu City Prosecutor Gandhi Truya pointed out that “insinuations” and “suspicions” were not enough to prove that he took the money, neither was the guard’s negligence in sleeping at his post or not noticing the coming and going of an unidentified man.
Prosecutor Nicolas Sellon noted “intriguing” lapses in the police investigation, like the lack of photos of the vault. His question of whether the real thief opened the safe by knowing the combination number has challenged the direction of the police inquiry, which has until now, focused on a mystery man who used brute force to crack the office vault.
This and other procedural fumbles in the police investigation noted by prosecutors reinforce what many suspected from Day One: The crime was an inside job. Jabagat was just the fall guy.
Jabagat can take comfort in knowing the public is clamoring for the case to be solved and to find out who really stole the Sinulog funds.
