Lawyers seek stop to impeach hearings vs VP
A group of lawyers led by Israelito Torreon asked the Supreme Court on Friday to declare as unconstitutional the impeachment proceedings against Vice President Sara Duterte at the House of Representatives.
In a 186-page petition, Torreon and lawyers Victor Rodriguez, Martin Delgra III, Jimmy Bondoc, Raul Lambino, Luna Acosta-Manlitoc and four others filed a petition for certiorari and prohibition, with prayer for the issuance of a temporary restraining order or writ of preliminary injunction, against the House and its committee on justice chaired by Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro
The Davao-based Torreon, who also served as counsel of jailed televangelist Apollo Quiboloy and absentee Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, said he and the nine other appellants filed the petition as citizens and taxpayers, as they are not part of Duterte’s legal team in the impeachment proceedings.
The petitioners argued that the justice panel committed “grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction” when it declared the third and fourth impeachment complaints against Duterte as sufficient in form, substance and grounds.
The first complaint, which was endorsed by the Makabayan bloc, was set aside for supposedly violating the prohibition on the filing of more than one impeachment case against the same official within one year.
The second complaint was withdrawn by Kiko Aquino-Dee to support the third complaint, which he said had the same allegations.
Among the alleged grounds for impeachment cited in the third and fourth complaints were culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust; misuse of confidential funds; corruption and bribery; unexplained wealth and failure to disclose all properties and interests in her statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN); and alleged high crimes of sedition and insurrection.
“It allowed the third and fourth impeachment complaints to survive despite defects in form and substance, and then attempted to cure those defects through a subpoena-driven evidentiary process,” Torreon said at a press conference hours after filing the petition.
“What the committee could not sustain through lawful threshold review, it sought to preserve through procedural overreach,” he added.
Grounds for plea
In the petition, Torreon contended that the House panel erred in trying to “cure” defects in the complaints through a “fishing expedition.”
“If a complaint is insufficient in substance at the start, it must be dismissed rather than bolstered,” he said.
Second, Torreon said the complaints merely relied on “conclusions” and “suspicions” rather than a direct recital of justiciable facts linking the vice president to specific offenses.
“It cannot rest on labels, suspicions, hearsay, unauthenticated materials and investigatory speculation,” he said.
Third, the appellants said there was procedural overreach when the committee, during a hearing on March 25, approved motions to subpoena bank records and documents from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), among other materials.
The act exceeded the committee’s constitutional role of “screening” cases, he said.
The appellants complained that the House issued subpoenas for Duterte’s SALN from 2007 to 2025, and the NBI’s investigation report on the supposed threats the Vice President made against President Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and former Speaker Martin Romualdez in November 2024.
‘Mini-trial’ remark
Torreon argued that the materials and documents being sought from the Ombudsman, NBI and the Commission on Audit were pieces of evidence “outside the complaints”.
Another issue that triggered the filing of the new petition was Luistro’s earlier statement describing the impeachment proceedings in the House as a “mini-trial.”
“The 1987 Constitution mandates that trials be held in the Senate, and the House, indeed, overstepped its boundaries and is conducting its own mini-trial, which is not to our humble mind, within the contemplation of the 1987 Constitution, in so far as the function of the House of Representatives, specifically the committee of justice, is concerned,” Torreon said.
Rodriguez, who previously served as Mr. Marcos’ executive secretary, said they went to the high court because they were “optimistic” that it would again rule in their favor.
He was referring to the high court ruling last year that declared as unconstitutional the first House-endorsed impeachment complaint against Duterte for violating the one-year bar rule on filings.
The high court, however, pointed out that the earlier ruling “did not absolve” Duterte of the alleged impeachable offenses.
******
Get real-time news updates: inqnews.net/inqviber
