Defense delays fuel concerns over VP impeachment trial
The prosecution in Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial on Monday raised concerns that her defense lawyers’ moves to examine evidence were slowing the proceedings, while warning that Duterte’s public attacks on the prosecution and the impeachment process could prejudice the case and potentially run afoul of the sub judice rule.
Private prosecutor Benjamin Tolosa Jr. said the actions of Duterte’s lawyers, whether deliberate or not, would cause delays, citing the defense’s decision to schedule the cross-checking of thousands of acknowledgment receipts (ARs) only on Aug. 14 despite an earlier directive from the Senate impeachment court to have it done last week.
The issue surfaced as the Senate canceled Monday’s trial because of heavy monsoon rains. The hearing, the 14th day of the trial, would resume on Tuesday, with the prosecution set to present Commission on Audit (COA) Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office auditor Xylene Mae del Campo as its fourth witness for Article 1, alleging the misuse of P612.5-million confidential funds in the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and Department of Education (DepEd) in 2022 and 2023.
Tolosa said the defense had enough time to arrange the document checking after Sen. Francis Escudero, the court’s presiding officer, issued the directive last Wednesday.
“We were told last Wednesday, we had more than enough time to schedule it last Thursday or Friday or during the weekend,” Tolosa said. “Maybe we would have appealed to the Senate clerk of court staff to accommodate us, like during the pretrial, we were making that request if needed.”
“But again, like we said, I don’t want to say that they are deliberately delaying the proceedings, but it is becoming clear from their actions during the pretrial and what they showed when Attorney Roderick Wamil and Xylene (Mae del Campo) were presented, what they are doing—deliberate or not—causes delay,” he said.
5,000 receipts
The dispute arose after Del Campo’s testimony was held up last week when she was asked to authenticate around 5,000 ARs submitted by the OVP and DepEd. The court then directed the defense to check the prosecution’s evidence.
The defense had refused to stipulate on the voluminous receipts, thus the impeachment court had to intervene by asking the parties to cross-check the copies of the documents the prosecution will present.
Prosecution counsel Lorna Kapunan even suggested that they use the copies of the defense documents. She even said in jest that she did not want to spend her Thursday and Friday skimming through ARs because she had planned to watch a movie.
In a radio interview on Sunday, however, defense deputy spokesperson Justin Gular said the earliest date the defense could make its lawyers available was Aug. 14, citing the size of the 16-member team and existing schedules.
Tolosa questioned why the defense could not assign some lawyers to undertake the checking instead of waiting for the entire team.
“They do not have to bring the entire team to compare documents,” he said, adding that the defense should not give the impression that it was “not prioritizing the impeachment case of the VP.”
Audit trail
The COA disallowed P73 million of the OVP’s P125 million in confidential fund expenses for the fourth quarter of 2022, as well as the entire P375 million spent by the OVP in the first to third quarters of 2023.
Wamil, who testified last week, said he had audited confidential and intelligence fund expenses of more than 30 agencies over a decade. But he said Duterte’s offices were the only ones he had encountered that relied solely on ARs without supporting documents such as official receipts or sales invoices.
He also testified that P40 million of the OVP’s fourth-quarter 2022 confidential fund allocation was used to purchase medicines later distributed as rewards. The expenses were disallowed because the ARs did not establish payment for successful information-gathering activities.
The confidential fund issue forms the core of Article I of the impeachment complaint, which the Senate has been hearing since July 29.
Contemptuous
In an online press briefing on Monday, Tolosa said the prosecution was also concerned about Duterte’s public statements attacking the proceedings and the prosecution.
He warned that her remarks could influence public perceptions of the case and undermine confidence in the Senate sitting as an impeachment court.
Tolosa specifically cited Duterte’s statement that “bending the law is very clear in the impeachment proceedings,” saying it could fall within the sub judice rule and may be considered contemptuous.
Tolosa said Duterte had also claimed that the impeachment complaint was unsupported by evidence, accused the prosecution of fabricating evidence and said the proceedings should not be based on “manufactured narratives.”
He said the remarks went beyond criticism of the prosecution and could amount to an attack on the integrity of the proceedings.
‘Not harmless rhetoric’
“It is very concerning. We can’t just accept those kinds of statements and treat them as harmless rhetorics because it’s an attack against the proceedings,” Tolosa said.
He said such statements could lead the public to believe that a conviction and removal were based not on evidence but on alleged irregularities in the proceedings.
Tolosa noted that even the defense had acknowledged that Escudero had acted fairly and impartially.
The prosecution is thus questioning both the pace of the defense’s evidence review and the effect of Duterte’s public attacks on the credibility of the impeachment process.
The defense has maintained that scheduling problems stem from limited manpower and the volume of evidence, rather than an effort to stall the trial. Gular said the 16-member team was “spread thin.”
The Senate earlier set a 92-day trial, with the House prosecution given 62 trial dates and the defense 30.
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