(Eagle News) — The National Union of People’s Lawyers on Friday expressed disappointment at the Court of Appeals’ recent decision that effectively barred death row inmate Mary Jane Veloso, who is detained in Indonesia, from testifying in the case against her alleged recruiters in the Philippines.
“We are disappointed that the taking of her material testimony is being prevented by our own courts, the Court of Appeals in particular, upon motion of the accused illegal recruiters’ defense team,” Edre Olalia, NUPL president, said in a statement.
Olalia was referring to Maria Cristina Sergio and her live-in partner Julius Lacanilao, who are accused of duping Veloso into carrying a suitcase with heroin into Indonesia.
Sergio and Lacanilao are facing human trafficking charges in connection with the incident.
Veloso, who is detained in a prison in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, was sentenced to death by the government of Indonesia, but was granted a last-minute reprieve following an appeal from then-President Benigno Aquino III.
According to Olalia, allowing Veloso to “tell her story” was not “violative of (the suspects’) right to confront the witnesses or to meet them face to face guaranteed under Section 14 (2) of the 1987 Constitution” as the appellate court said as they would be represented in Indonesia while the deposition was taking place in the first place.
“Given the novelty of the legal situation involving two jurisdictions and her circumstances of being detained in a foreign land unable or disallowed to go home as yet, her deposition would shed light on the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” he said.
In an 18-page decision promulgated on December 13 last year, the CA’s Former Eleventh Division granted the petition for certiorari and prohibition sought for by the lawyers of Sergio and Lacanilao, effectively barring a local judge from observing the deposition of Veloso’s testimony in Indonesia.
In granting Sergio’s and Lacanilao’s petition, the appellate court also effectively reversed the decision of Judge Anarica Castillo-Reyes of the Nueva Ecija Regional Trial Court Branch 88.
Reyes had earlier allowed the Philippine consulate in Indonesia to take Veloso’s testimony.
“However, the circumstances in this case call for the application of Rule 119, which categorically states that the conditional examination of a prosecution witness shall be made before the court where the case is pending in light of the constitutionally enshrined right of the petitioners to meet the witnesses face to face or the right of confrontation and cross-examination,” the appellate court said.
It added that Veloso’s imprisonment in Indonesia was a “limitation on her mobility” to undergo the required cross-examination in criminal proceedings in the Philippines.
