Courts having control of witnesses to damn accused—lawmaker

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – Representative Karlo Nograles (Davao City, First District) has opposed the proposal to transfer the Witness Protection Program (WPP) from the Department of Justice to the courts, saying doing so will threaten the impartiality of the courts.

“I believe the proposal (to transfer WPP to the courts) would create problems in our justice system,” Nograles said of the bill which has been submitted to the House committee on justice.

“The witness protection program rightly belongs to the DOJ primarily because they are the prosecutorial arm of government,” he said.

As prosecutors, the DOJ officials present the witness in court, so they have the right to protect their own witnesses, according to Nograles.

“If you transfer the WPP to the courts, you are damning the accused, who will already be good as convicted,” he said in a text message to the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Thursday.

“Imagine if the witnesses are placed under the protection of the court, then the courts will naturally be biased in favor of the witnesses,” he said.

He said it would be better to “keep the witnesses under the protection of the prosecutors to keep the courts isolated from politics.”

“Let the courts keep its neutrality so that when the prosecutors present their ‘protected witnesses’ and place them on the witness stand, the courts can freely judge—bias-free and politics-free—whether or not to believe the testimony of that witness,” Nograles said.

“But even if for the sake of argument the WPP is tainted with politics, as long as our courts remain impartial and free from bias and free from politics, then the accused will still get a fair trial,” Nograles said.

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