MANILA, Philippines—It would be difficult to match Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s comprehensive knowledge of the law and his capacity for making firm decisions that are on full display at Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment trial. So how is one to try to keep pace with him?
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile
In the course of the trial, Enrile has offered some pointers to Corona’s lawyers, the prosecutors, and even the senator-judges, on how they could be on the same page with him: Read up on books by Charles Black and Raoul Berger writing on impeachment.
Hearsay rule
In last Thursday’s hearing, Enrile specifically referred chief defense counsel Serafin Cuevas to the books by the two authors following an exchange on the application of the “hearsay rule” in an impeachment trial.
Enrile had just ruled as hearsay Justice Secretary Leila de Lima’s testimony on irregularities at the Supreme Court as disclosed by Associate Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno in her dissenting opinion to the Nov. 15, 2011, tribunal decision to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) against a travel ban on former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Cuevas said he had searched for the rules of procedure relating to “hearsay evidence” and did not find any.
Enrile tersely told him: “Counsel, I’m going to ask you to read the books of Charles [Black] and Raoul Berger… These two books will tell you that the hearsay rule is not adhered to strictly in impeachment cases.”
“If you want I can bring them here. I have them in my office,” he added.
Photocopy books
Cuevas thanked him, and said he had gone over Black’s 1974 layman’s guide to impeachment, but had not yet seen Berger’s 1972 book, “Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems.”
Lead prosecutor Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr., for his part, said he had been looking for copies of the books in local bookstores to no avail. In the end, he said, he might have to go to Enrile’s office and photocopy them.
“When he mentioned those books, he said the present case was not a criminal case, which was our argument from day one. So those books must be helpful to us,” Tupas said by phone.
His colleague, Marikina Rep. Romero Quimbo, said he had read Black’s book, which he said was “useful because of the dearth of jurisprudence on impeachment in the country.’’
Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III said he had browsed through Black’s book ahead of Corona’s trial, while Senators Francis Pangilinan and Gregorio Honasan said they had read both books.
Pangilinan said he had also read Michael Gerhardt’s “The Federal Impeachment Process.”
“It gives us a better perspective,” Sotto said in a phone interview.
Honasan agreed and said that both books “add value to perspective.” But he noted that they were written in the context of the American political system. “You have to discern what can be applicable to our situation,” he said.
Down to conscience
Defense counsel Ramon Esguerra said he had not yet read either of the two books, but some of his colleagues in the defense had. “But I know that it is ultimately the impeachment court’s call whether to be liberal in the application of the technical rules on evidence,” he said in a text message.
But Honasan said that in the end, the trial would boil down to the senator-judges voting according to their conscience, and not so much on the number of books they had read.
“Whatever standards you apply in weighing the evidence, we will all have to use our conscience,” he said.