Senate President Pro Tempore Franklin Drilon. JOAN BONDOC/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Senate President Pro Tempore Franklin Drilon appealed to President Duterte to allow due process to proceed in the multiple murder case against Supt. Marvin Marcos and his men in the killing of Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. in a raid on a Leyte jail on Nov. 5.
Drilon made the appeal on Thursday after Mr. Duterte said he would not allow Marcos and his men to go to jail. Marcos is the chief of the PNP Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Eastern Visayas.
The senator said the President’s defense of the police officers would also create a problem for Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II.
Drilon expected Aguirre to act on the National Bureau of Investigation’s murder complaint against Marcos and his men, as the latter agreed with the observation that the killing of Espinosa at the Leyte subprovincial jail in Baybay City was premeditated.
An NBI probe found that the mayor and another inmate were shot in their respective cells. Father of drug lord Kerwin, Espinosa had signed an affidavit linking police and government officials to the drug trade.
Hyperbole
The NBI said there was no gunfight between Espinosa and the raiding police team, contrary to the claim of Marcos and his men.
The President said that he did not care if the NBI had charged them with murder, pointing out that the bureau and the Department of Justice (DOJ) were under his authority. The NBI is the investigative arm of the DOJ.
The President’s statement that he will not allow the killers of Espinosa go to jail was just a “hyperbole,” Aguirre said yesterday.
“We all know that the President is fond of using hyperbole. I see nothing wrong (with what he said),” the justice secretary said in a press conference.
He said the President’s defense of the policemen would not result in a whitewash of the murder case, which the NBI filed against Marcos and his men.
Read between lines
“The President is merely exercising his right to express his opinion,” he added. “The President is not intervening in the case. He does not micromanage every department.”
“He said, ‘I will not allow the police to go to jail.’ Read between the lines,” Aguirre said. “If evidence will show after trial that these policemen will be found guilty, that would be the (only) time the President could use his power to pardon anybody.”
Former prosecutor
Speaking to reporters, Drilon pointed out that Mr. Duterte is a former prosecutor, who knew how to decide on a case without anyone controlling him because he exercises quasi-judicial powers.
That is why when a party disagrees with a decision of a prosecutor, he or she could appeal the case with the justice secretary, Drilon said.
“We therefore appeal to the President, being a former prosecutor, to allow the process to proceed,” he said.
The process, according to Drilon, also allows the President to extend pardon to convicted criminals.
“If after the trial in court, the police officers are found guilty and the President is not satisfied with that finding, he can always pardon the accused. That is the process,” the Senate president pro tempore said.
Drilon said Aguirre himself would not know what to do after Mr. Duterte’s strong defense of the police officers, especially since the justice secretary agreed that the killing of Espinosa had indications of being premeditated.
The senator recalled that at one of the Senate hearings, he posed a series of questions to Aguirre, including whether he found the killing of Espinosa to be premeditated given the circumstances of his death. Drilon said Aguirre agreed that the police killing was premeditated.
Marcos and his men raided Espinosa’s cell before dawn on Nov. 5 on the strength of a search warrant for weapons and drugs. The team claimed Espinosa fired at the officers, who shot back killing the mayor. Raul Yap, another inmate, was also killed allegedly in fire fight with the officers. However, the NBI said Espinosa and Yap were unarmed.
Drilon said allowing the process to proceed would be “the best way to determine if a person is guilty of the crime charged.”
“The reason why we have a process is for us to know whether we should punish a person or not. Because the process allows the truth to come out,” he said.
Sen. Leila de Lima called Mr. Duterte a “murderer” and the “father of extrajudicial killings” after learning that the President admitted to having ordered Marcos and his men to kill Espinosa.
De Lima said she had read the entire statement and quoted Mr. Duterte as saying, “I will not abandon these policemen because I was the one who ordered them.”
“What did he order? We have someone who was killed and that was Mayor Espinosa and another one, Yap,” she said.
But a check with the Inquirer’s complete quote of the President on the portion of his speech that De Lima was referring to read: “[D]o not interfere. They have a finding. Good. Then you will file a case. But I will not abandon these policemen because it was my order. ‘Sir, you told us to arrest (the drug suspects), but when they resist (we should shoot them).’”