‘Fake lawyer’ exposed by Iglesia defender

The 64-year-old “fake lawyer” who was arrested last week in Caloocan City has posted bail and come out lashing at his accuser, a real lawyer who went after the suspect for attacking the influential Iglesia ni Cristo (INC).

“This is a case which involves the INC ruling elite persecuting outspoken members and defenders. But freedom of speech still trumps INC’s freedom to discipline INC’s sheepish members,” Joaquin Lorenzo Misa Jr., told the Inquirer after being released from the Caloocan police headquarters Friday night.

Misa was charged with falsification of public documents and resisting arrest on Wednesday in the Caloocan court based on a complaint from lawyer Roderick Manzano. This was after the complainant furnished the police with a certification from the Supreme Court’s Office of the Bar Confidant that Misa was not a member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP).

Misa, who claimed that he has been practicing law for the last 30 years, was then serving as a defense counsel of rape suspect Jose Norilito Fruto, an ophthalmologist and expelled INC member who had reportedly written blogs critical of the church leadership.

Fruto was charged with two counts of rape for allegedly molesting a college student in Caloocan and has other criminal cases pending in Quezon City and Pasay City. A robbery charge against him was dismissed in November last year for lack of probable cause.

In a phone interview on Saturday, Misa, a Cubao resident, could not give direct answers when asked for his law credentials, like the school where he studied. He said he and his family were still traumatized by his incarceration.

The Inquirer obtained a copy of the December 2015 motion filed by Misa in the sala of Judge Jesus Mupas of Pasay Regional Trial Court Branch 112, where Fruto is facing another rape case.

In that motion, Misa assailed Mupas and asked the judge to inhibit himself from the case for his supposed tendency to use government resources to “manipulate” the police, the prosecutor’s office and other members of the judiciary “to facilitate the illegal arrest and detention of INC’s perceived enemies.”

How fakery was discovered

Reached by the Inquirer also on Saturday, Manzano said he earlier initiated a “disbarment case” against Misa because of his attacks against Judge Mupas and the INC, of which Manzano is a member.

Misa’s language berating the judge during a December 2015 hearing, he recalled, was “very offensive, abusive and foul.”

Manzano, who was not involved in the case, said he heard about Misa’s actions from his fellow INC members.

It was in the course of preparing the disbarment case that he discovered that Misa was not even a real lawyer, according to Manzano. The man, he said, used an IBP Roll of Attorneys’ number—34330—that belonged to Teresita Abaca of Calapan, Oriental Mindoro province.

There is a lawyer named “Joaquin Misa Jr.” who is based in Cagayan de Oro, but his middle name is Villanueva and not Lorenzo, Manzano added.

“Had he not offended the judge and the Iglesia, and had he only acted diligently in his pleadings, this may not have happened,” Manzano said. “God may have orchestrated all this.”

“I sued him because as a member of the church, I was insulted [by his accusations]. I also did this to uphold the integrity of my profession,” Manzano added.