Prosecution: Strict technicalities could delay Sara Duterte impeachment trial

The House prosecution on Tuesday said insisting on strict adherence to technical rules in presenting evidence could unnecessarily delay the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.

Private prosecutor James Alih made the argument as it clashed with Duterte’s defense counsel over the process of authenticating bank documents, which were submitted to the courts by way of a subpoena.

“This is not a court that we have to authenticate each and everything. Yes, it’s an impeachment court, we have to respect it, we have to respect the process. But we cannot go through the same rigors simply because that is the rules of court, that is provided in the rules of court, and that is only suppletorily applied here,” Alih said.

He said clarified that the prosecution did not intend to unnecessarily prolong the procedure and spend the time of the senator-judges, especially when the authenticity of the documents was not genuinely being disputed.

Alih said the bank records from the Landbank branch had already been turned over pursuant to a subpoena issued by the court, not the prosecution. He said the documents were also common exhibits for both the prosecution and the defense.

“At the end of the day, your honor, I think that the rules of court should be used in order to expedite, in order to not delay, which we’ve seen for several times now," he said.

"So I think to cling to technicalities on matters that are not even genuinely an issue is counterproductive to the defense, to the prosecution, and I’m sure to the members of the honorable court,” he added.

He was responding to the objections raised by defense counsel questioned Carlo Joaquin Narvasa on the manner by which the prosecution "jumped like a whole set of questions" in asking its witness, Eunice Sumatra, without supposedly laying the foundation of her testimony.

Following the presentation of an Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) witness, the prosecution called Sumatra, the branch manager of Landbank San Pedro Davao, to authenticate several bank documents subpoenaed by the court.

Senate impeachment court presiding officer Francis Escudero agreed with Narvasa about the need for the prosecution to go through the "ardous and painful" process of authenticating documents.

“This, your honor, is not procedural. This is substantive. This goes into the due process rights of my client, who is the respondent accused. This is a trial which will go into whether she will be acquitted or held guilty for the accusations of the prosecution,” Narvasa said.

“And the prosecution should focus on identifying and authenticating their documents and not rush. We are not rushing, your honor,” he added.

“The court would like to hear, the presiding officer specifically, how you will present this witness and will make the corresponding rulings as may be necessary to abbreviate the proceedings, given that there are 20 witnesses testifying on basically the same thing, with varying accounts and varying bank names,” Escudero said.

Escudero initially allowed the authentication of every document to proceed supposedly to demonstrate how long the process would take.

After the lengthy authentication process, however, the presiding officer ruled that abbreviating the proceedings would not deprive the defense of its opportunity to raise questions about the evidence presented.

“The court relies not on custody alone but the records’ direct production by the institutional custodians, pursuant to the subpoena, their documented receipt, and their safekeeping by the Clerk of Court, their availability for inspection, and their court-supervised reproduction,” Escudero said.

“We are not depriving the respondent of any of its available rights to question the authenticity of the documents but are simply trying to abbreviate the proceedings," he said.

"If there are no allegations nor claims of fraud, palpable mistake in the preparation of documents, in order to abbreviate the proceedings on these witnesses, which are similarly situated,” Escudero added.— MCG, GMA News

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