What Went Before: Slain lawyer, judges, prosecutors

• Lawyers groups have counted more than 50 lawyers, judges and prosecutors killed since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in 2016.• In 2020 alone, at least eight lawyers have died, including Palawan lawyer Eric Jay Magcamit, the 52nd victim of deadly attacks against court officers, according to the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL).

• On Jan. 3, lawyer Ray Moncada was shot by unidentified assailants at the gate of his house at Doña Asuncion Village in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental province. He underwent surgery after the shooting incident but died in a private hospital 10 days later.• On Jan. 10, the body of former Batangas congressman Edgar Mendoza, a former Batangas Regional Trial Court (RTC) judge, and two others were found inside his car that was abandoned on a bridge rarely used by motorists in Tiaong, Quezon province. • On Jan. 28, lawyer Anselmo “Sato” Carlos and his driver, Marcial Mendoza, were killed in an ambush in Sta. Rita town in Pampanga.

• On Feb. 19, the Bureau of Corrections’ (BuCor) legal service chief, Fredric Anthony Santos, was shot dead in Muntinlupa City. He was one of those invited to the Senate last year to testify about purported irregularities in the BuCor, particularly on the controversial good conduct time allowance law, which reduces prison sentences of convicts based on good behavior while serving jail time.

• Bayani Dalangin, 73, a retired Public Attorney’s Office lawyer and a professor of law at Araullo University, was shot dead in front of his clients in his office in Talavera, Nueva Ecija province, on Feb. 28.

• Jovencio Senados, an inquest division chief of the Manila City Prosecutor’s Office, was killed on July 7 on his way to work.

• On Nov. 11, Judge Maria Teresa Abadilla of Manila RTC Branch 45, 44, was shot in her office at the Manila City Hall. The suspect, a lawyer and the clerk of court, shot himself later.

• The Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada on extrajudicial killings and violent attacks on jurists and legal workers counted at least 57 lawyers, judges and prosecutors, who have died between July 2016 and July this year.

—Inquirer Research 

Sources: Inquirer Archives, NUPL, lrwc.org, IBP