Pimentel: Kerwin Espinosa qualified for state protection

Kerwin Espinosa. FILE PHOTO

Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III on Friday said confessed drug lord Kerwin Espinosa is qualified for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Witness Protection Program (WPP), deferring to the decision of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II in placing someone once among the country’s most wanted under state protection.

“At first I thought that Kerwin was the most guilty, hence disqualified to be accepted into the WPP. However, his testimony states that he gets his supply from someone else with even bigger operations,” Pimentel told the Inquirer when reached for comment.

“Hence, it can be said that Kerwin is not the most guilty, hence may be accepted into the program,” he said.

He expressed deference to Aguirre’s decision, saying he had all the documents and evidence to weigh before making up his mind.

READ: Aguirre open to putting Kerwin under witness protection program

“The decision maker is the DOJ Secretary. He has all the papers, evidence, etc. before him. I defer to his judgment because he is better situated than I am to judge [Espinosa’s] fitness of admission into the WPP (Witness Protection Program),” said Pimentel, adding that the justice chief is the administrator of the program.

He corrected the impression among many that witness protection is only granted to crime suspects who are “the least guilty” in a particular crime. He said such “very basic error” in the appreciation of the law and rules has been “repeatedly committed.”

“The concept involved is not ‘least guilty’ but ‘not the most guilty.’  Those have different implications,” said Pimentel.

Section 10 of Republic Act No. 6981, the 1991 law on witness protection, provides that any person who was party to a crime and who would like to become state witness may be deemed qualified if “he does not appear to be the most guilty,” among other criteria.

Espinosa had been under the custody of the National Bureau of Investigation, an agency also under the DOJ, when he was admitted into the program just before Christmas.

READ: DOJ wants NBI to take custody of Kerwin Espinosa

The confessed trafficker appeared in Senate hearings on the suspicious killing of his father, Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr., who was shot dead by police operatives while detained in a pre-dawn operation on Nov. 5.

In appearing at the Senate, Espinosa testified to giving drug money to Sen. Leila de Lima, Aguirre’s arch nemesis and among the staunchest critics of the administration’s war on drugs. RAM/rga