Four truths on Sara’s trial
The impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte featured a barrage of debates on the search for truth. Though the lawyers sparred with surprising calmness, the viewing public grappled with legalese unfamiliar to many. Let us, therefore, cut through the legal brouhaha and distill these exchanges into one question: What is the truth in the impeachment trial?
THE ANSWER, I BELIEVE, lies in understanding four truths: judicial truth, political or convenient truth, public truth, and absolute or Christian truth. To remind us, the ongoing trial seeks to reconstruct the facts through evidence culled from the use of the Rules of Court (Rules).
In judicial courts, judges decide cases based on the law and the pieces of evidence that are properly marked, identified, offered, admitted, and believed pursuant to the Rules. They never rely on what they hear on the radio or see on television or on TikTok. For example, judges cannot use in their decisions what they actually saw in a traffic accident. Unless the prosecution establishes the accident and the guilt of the accused via evidence duly presented and proven, the judge is duty bound to acquit the accused, despite what he/she may have personally perceived.
On the other hand, an impeachment court is not purely judicial. Senator-judges, garbed in striking crimson robes, may ape Supreme Court justices, clad in conservative black gowns, but they perform a distinct constitutional function. Unlike judicial magistrates, who are chosen from the crème de la crème of the legal profession, senator-judges need not be lawyers. In fact, most of them are not.
Consequently, they are not confined solely to “judicial truth” and may decide according to what their political instincts deem to be “political truths.” In this sui generis tribunal, judicial and political truths inevitably intersect.
THIS INTERSECTION OF THE TWO TRUTHS was illustrated by the exchange between prosecutor Akbayan party list Rep. Chel Diokno and defense counsel Michael Poa over the prosecution’s request for subpoenas directing the Bureau of Internal Revenue to produce the VP’s tax records contained in the so-called “Green Box,” and requiring the Anti-Money Laundering Council to present the financial records of the VP and her husband.
Their arguments highlighted two fundamental evidentiary distinctions: first, the difference between a subpoena and a search warrant; and second, between “admissibility” and “relevancy.”
Primarily, a subpoena is merely a process directing a person(s) to attend and testify at a trial (subpoena ad testificandum) and/or to bring certain documents (subpoena duces tecum). In short, a subpoena opens the door to inquiry but does not decide the controversy itself.
Au contraire, a search and seizure warrant authorizes law enforcers to enter private premises to search for and seize specifically described property under constitutional safeguards. Conversely, a subpoena involves neither intrusion nor police enforcement.
EVEN IF PRODUCED pursuant to a subpoena, are the documents automatically admissible as evidence? Certainly not. Evidence must be both relevant and competent—relevant, if it has a logical connection to the issue, and competent, if the Constitution, the law, or the Rules permit the courts to consider it in deciding the controversy.
Relevance, however, does not by itself ensure admissibility or credibility. Presiding officer Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero stressed that the Senate would determine, at the proper time, whether the records should ultimately be believed. Nonetheless, he issued the subpoena because the requested documents appeared prima facie (on their face) to be relevant to the impeachment allegations concerning unexplained wealth and betrayal of public trust.
Indeed, these distinctions are not mere technicalities. They are constitutional safeguards to ensure that the quest for judicial truth is premised on reason and evidence. Still, the sought-after truths point to a much higher objective—one that no court or tribunal can fully attain. As Diokno emphasized, counsels can only present “… enough evidence as to make conclusions as far as the judgment is concerned, even if the members of the court [would] not get to see the entire truth.”
This brings us to the people’s truth, that is, what the public believes it to be when both the judicial and political truths become no longer credible. This was what happened when the Second People Power Revolution erupted due to the refusal of the Senate tribunal to open the so-called second envelope. They thought justice was no longer available in the then-ongoing judicial and political process.
The fourth—the absolute truth for every Christian country—brings us to the greatest trial in history two millennia ago when Jesus declared that He came into the world to “testify to the truth.” And Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38). Pilate’s question continues to hound all tribunals in Christian countries today.
Ultimately, every court must strive to approximate it. Justice, after all, cannot rest on speculation, political convenience, or public clamor. It must satisfy the human longing for the absolute truth, however elusive it may be.
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