THE ACQUITTAL OF HUBERT WEBB

Not satisfied with pissing off the Noynoy administration and inviting vituperation from the same, the Supreme Court dives in to invite public if ignorant condemnation by declaring the convicted rapist and murderers of the Vizconde Family innocent in a decision that reads like a police procedural and bores like a dental drill into the old storyand finds fatal cavities therein.

IN the past two weeks the Corona Courtnot the Arroyo Court, as UP professors, publicity-hungry lawyers, ignorant newsmen and more ignorant newspaper columnists, the public at large, and a violent antiviolence crusader, contemptuously referred to itfor which they should be cited for contempt and jailed until they retract and apologizeissued two brave rulings, which are correct in the result though not always in the reasoning and nigh unpopular. Both in the teeth of a stupid public (an unavoidable condition) and a willfully ignorant media (a condition that is usually paid for). The first decision, striking down President Noynoys first official act, Executive Order No. 1 creating a Truth Commission to

find facts that would single out as guilty the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) administrations top officials and her close allies with regard to three events for the purposes of prosecuting them criminally. They were, to wit, the Garci Tapes Scandal where the only real crime committed established was the illegal wiretap of GMA and the illegal distribution and playing of those illegal wiretaps; the NBN-ZTE deal, stolen from one Joey de Venecia, to set up a staggeringly expensive but totally useless exclusively government communications backbone; and the Fertilizer Scam that distributed sums anywhere from P3 to P5 million in cash to each congressman for watered down if not spurious fertilizer about which all congressmen in the administration and the opposition kept mum until a single congressman complained about (1) why he was included among the beneficiaries when he hadnt received a peso of the money for (2) watered down fertilizer intended for his entirely concretized, highly urbanized district of Makati. The Corona Court found that the Presidents EO authorizing himself to create a truth commission for the above purpose (which smacked of a bill of attainder tar-brushing persons without the benefit of a judicial trial and positing as fact what were yet rumors of criminal misconduct) could not be authorized by the presidents power to reorganize his department under administrative law and was therefore illegal. The Court had had enough of the confusing mish-mash of overlapping functions and authorities throughout, across, as well as inside and outside the three branches of government thereby erasing the distinctions of a system of separate powers and unsetting the equilibrium of a democratic system of checks and balance. While this

executed the Truth Commission by firing squad, the coup de grace delivered by the Corona Court was the major ruling that President Noynoys Truth Commission issued in conjunction with a short, sharp, vitriolic and vindictive first inaugural address singling out the Arroyo administration as the target of its investigations, amounted to a violation of the equal protection clause of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution which is the principal pillar and support of a democratic society. There were immediate howls of protest from everyone who was hungry for publicity in a fallow post-election period and yet had missed every opportunity available at the time these alleged anomalies had transpired to find legal proof establishing prima facie criminal cases against them. Instead they either grabbed or made up out of whole cloth every baseless rumor about these events and published them as fact, only to be debunked by yet other baseless rumors published as fact, all the while avoiding any effort to legally establish legal proof of them. Fast on the heels of this howling controversy, the Corona Court promulgated, in the teeth of ignorant and hostile public opinion, not to mention vituperative (and contemptuous) reaction, an irreversible decision supported by a clear majority of the justices participating acquitting Hubert Webb and his companions of the crimes of rape and murders for which they had been sentenced to life imprisonment and had already served 15 years in jail and for which the Congress had readopted the death penalty proscribed by the 1987 Constitution.

Perhaps sensing that the mood had changed when Congress all but unanimously voted to repeal the death sentence a few years ago, the Corona Court revisited the Webb case and, in the teeth of high judicial practice, reviewed the evidence and decision of the trial court and the Court of Appeals and found (1) that it originated mainly from a single source, to wit, a drug-addicted, drug-using and drug-dealing NBI asset prone to lying called Jessica Alfaro; (2) that there really were no actual eyewitnesses to the gruesome rape and murders because Jessica Alfaro said she had proudly stepped forward with (a) the possibility of an eyewitness who had narrated to her everything that had transpired during the rape and murders and (b) had nonetheless refused to come forward and (c) as a result, she would repeat his testimony as though she herself had been the eyewitness to all of which the National Bureau of Investigation acceded. The Court acknowledged that Alfaro did give an impressively detailed testimony of every gruesome detail of the rape and murders of the Vizconde family that she could just as well have read about in the gruesomely detailed newspaper accounts of the crimes as well as in the details supplied to her by the NBI investigators who were her handlers (she had long been a police asset for squealing on NBI targets)as she might have witnessed them herself but only if she could be in several places around the crime scene at the same time. This betokened a teleportation and parallel existence for which the Court had received no evidence both about her and from quantum mechanics for which no one made a proffer. Alfaros account had her inside and outside the Vizconde house, indifferent and oblivious to

what was happening inside, elated and distressed at what was supposedly happening inside, all the time making no effort along with her murderous or complicit companions to hide themselves from possible public view while the crimes were taking place. The Court brilliantly summed up the case as follows: On June 30, 1991 Estrellita Vizconde and her daughters Carmela, nineteen years old, and Jennifer, seven, were brutally slain at their home in Paraaque City. Following an intense investigation, the police arrested a group of suspects, some of whom gave detailed confessions. But the trial court smelled a frame-up and eventually ordered them discharged. Thus, the identities of the real perpetrators remained a mystery especially to the public whose interests were aroused by the gripping details of what everybody referred to as the Vizconde massacre.
Four years later in 1995, the National Bureau of Investigation or

NBI announced that it had solved the crime. It presented star-witness Jessica M. Alfaro, one of its informers, who claimed that she witnessed the crime. She pointed to accused Hubert Jeffrey P. Webb, Antonio Tony Boy Lejano, Artemio Dong Ventura, Michael A. Gatchalian, Hospicio Pyke Fernandez, Peter Estrada, Miguel Ging Rodriguez, and Joey Filart as the culprits. She also tagged accused police officer, Gerardo Biong, as an accessory after the fact. Relying primarily on Alfaro's testimony, on August 10, 1995 the public prosecutors filed an information for rape with homicide against Webb, et al.

The Regional Trial Court of Paraaque City, Branch 274, presided over by Judge Amelita G. Tolentino, tried only seven of the accused since Artemio Ventura and Joey Filart remained at large. The prosecution presented Alfaro as its main witness with the others corroborating her testimony. These included the medico-legal officer who autopsied the bodies of the victims, the security guards of Pitong Daan Subdivision, the former laundrywoman of the Webb household, police officer Biongs former girlfriend, and Lauro G. Vizconde, Estrellitas husband. Against these accusations, the principal accused Hubert Webb presented incontrovertible proof that he was thousands of miles away, in the United States, before, as and after the crimes were committed. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albrights office issued a certification to that effect. The media denounced the certification as having been purchased by the father, Sen. Freddie Webb, of the accused Hubert, despite the fact that the US government vigorously prosecutes and never compromises with individuals who can easily dispose of hundreds of billions of dollars. To wit, Latin American drug lords, errant investment bankers, savings and loans presidents, Arab sheiks and, most particularly, anyone rich or poor, who fails to report his income and pay the right taxes there onall on the slimmest evidence and the slightest pretext. Yet the media charged that Sen. Freddie Webb, to be sure a retired basketball player famous in his prime but at a time when businesses were sponsoring basketball teams for comparative peanuts and in devalued pesos was buying the exalted office of the second highest US official after the US President to certify that his son was in the United States when all the time he was in the Philippines raping one girl after murdering her mother and little sister.

The trial court bought it and said that the errant actions (e.g., loosening a light bulb to darken a place that wouldnt anyway be the crime scene, breaking into a house whose door had been purposely left open not to mention frantically seeking while already inside the house the keys to the house door), the variable testimony, the wildly swinging psychological reactions of the eyewitness who was not an eyewitness, by her own admission, but was only repeating what an eyewitness she never produced had told her trumpedmeaning to say, beatthe officially certified documentary evidence of official American immigration procedures that the principal accused, Hubert Webb, had been subjected to going in and, months after the crime, getting out of the United States. Against such official acts, proof that Jessica Alfaro was a compulsive liar, a police asset willing to do and say anything to help her police handlers look good especially after four months of turning up nothing in the Vizconde massacre investigation, as when she beat up a police lineup suspect that she claimed she knew intimately and had threatened her. To her own, the police suspects, as well as the NBIs surprise, he turned out to be another person. He was dusted off, patched up and sent home.

But impressed by Alfaros detailed narration of the crime and the events surrounding it, the trial court found a credible witness in her. It noted her categorical, straightforward, spontaneous, and frank testimony,

undamaged by grueling cross-examinations. The trial court remained unfazed by significant discrepancies between Alfaros April 28 and May 22, 1995 affidavits, accepting her explanation that she at first wanted to protect her former boyfriend, accused Estrada, and a relative, accused Gatchalian; that no lawyer assisted her; that she did not trust the investigators who helped her prepare her first affidavit; and that she felt unsure if she would get the support and security she needed once she disclosed all about the Vizconde killings.
In contrast, the Court said, the trial court thought little of the

denials and alibis that Webb, Lejano, Rodriguez, and Gatchalian set up for their defense Thus, on January 4, 2000, after four years of arduous hearings, the trial court rendered judgment, finding all the accused guilty as charged and imposing on Webb et al life sentences.

On appeal, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial courts decision. The appellate court did not agree that the accused were tried by publicity or that the trial judge was biased. The convicted tried to reverse their convictions over the years until they raised for the umpteenth time an issue that the police, the prosecution, the trial court, the appellate court and even early Supreme Courts ignored: why couldnt a DNA test be conducted to determine if the semen sample found in Carmela Vizconde matched Webbs semen? The semen sample was lost when the prosecution brought it to court, left it with the judge and, maybe, he licked it but it couldnt be found. At any

rate, the ignorant argued that if the semen sample had been tainted so would the DNA examination results that might have come out of it. DNA is never tainted. It is degraded. Perhaps over time. So degraded it cannot be determined whose DNA it is. But if it is at all extantor shall we shall aliveit will be possible to analyze it and in analyzing it found whose DNA it is. There could be several DNAs in the sample, some from the hands of police investigators, the saliva of forensic examiners who talk or even eat while they work and so spew salivaFilipinos can never stop eatingbut however many DNAs there are in a sample, if the sample is at all viable it can be analyzed and the various strands distinguished, separated, and identified as belonging to, say, the cops, the forensic examiners, the NBI director, hell even anybody who got off on italong with the one who raped and murdered Carmela Vizconde. The medical evidence clearly established that Carmela was raped and, consistent with this, said the Court, semen specimen was found in her. It is true that Alfaro identified Webb in her testimony as Carmelas rapist and killer but serious questions had been raised about her credibility. At the very least, there exists a possibility that Alfaro had lied. On the other hand, the semen specimen taken from Carmela cannot possibly lie. It cannot be coached or allured by a promise of reward or financial support. No two persons have the same DNA fingerprint, with the exception of identical twins. If, on examination, the DNA of the subject specimen does not belong to Webb, then he did not rape Carmela. It is that simple. Thus, the Court would have been able to determine that Alfaro committed perjury in saying that he did.

But the Court, on the seminal issue, ruled that there wasnt a clear duty for the police to preserve DNA samples when the case was on trial, not least because the technology to conduct DNA tests did not exist yet in the country. One wonders why the Webbs didnt ask the FBI for help. But then try having your son charged with multiple murder and rape and see if you can think of such alternatives. At any rate, the Supreme Court didnt think it was important. The sample was lost. There is a duty of the police to keep evidence indefinitely. That duty was neglected, perhaps willfully. Who knows? What was more important for the Court was something that didnt require DNA analysisbut was susceptible to reason: the self-contradictory and occasionally improbable testimony of Jessica Alfaroa police asset for Gods sake, whose utility to and income from the police depended on how useful she made herself to themwho admitted that she never saw anything herself but claimed to know someone who did witness every detail of the horrible multiple crimes and had told it all to her. And as she could not produce this someone, she would just pretend to be that someone and pass of his testimonythough hearsay from her mouthas her own. And upon that basis, and in the teeth of Madeleine Albrights official certification that Hubert Webb was in America when the crime was committed, the trial court convicted all the accused they could catchminus two still on runone wonders what will happen to them now?and sentenced them to life in prison of which they served already 15 years.

The Supreme Court chose, at this late dateand some procedural experts would argue, way out of time and judicial proprietyto retry the case as though it were a trial court and not the final court of appeal open only to questions of law. The Court found Alfaros testimony improbable and Webbs alibi unassailable and on that factual basiswhich is the best basis of all because it is not a mere technicalityacquitted him and his coaccused and set them free immediately to rejoin their families in their collective old age. For these young men had gone in in their 20s and left it in their 40s. The real words of the Supreme Court

ULTIMATELY, said the Court, the controlling issues are:

1.

Whether or not Alfaros testimony as eyewitness, describing

the crime and identifying Webb, Lejano, Gatchalian, Fernandez, Estrada, Rodriguez, and two others as the persons who committed it, is entitled to belief; and

2. crime.

Whether or not Webb presented sufficient evidence to prove his

alibi and rebut Alfaros testimony that he led the others in committing the

Merits of the case

Said the Court: Alfaro was, at the time she revealed her story, working for the NBI as an asset, a stool pigeon, one who earned her living by fraternizing with criminals so she could squeal on them to her NBI handlers. She had to live a life of lies to get rewards that would pay for her subsistence and vices. xxx When Alfaro seemed unproductive for sometime, however, they teased her about it and she was piqued. One day, she unexpectedly told Sacaguing that she knew someone who had the real story behind the Vizconde massacre. Sacaguing showed interest. Alfaro promised to bring that someone to the NBI to tell his story. When this did not happen and Sacaguing continued to press her, she told him that she might as well assume the role of her informant. Sacaguing testified thus:

ATTY. ONGKIKO: Q. Atty. Sacaguing, how did Jessica Alfaro become a witness in the Vizconde murder case? Will you tell the Honorable Court? xxxx A. She told me. Your Honor, that she knew somebody who related to her the circumstances, I mean, the details of the massacre of the Vizconde family. Thats what she told me, Your Honor.

ATTY. ONGKIKO: Q. And what did you say? xxxx A. I was quite interested and I tried to persuade her to introduce to me that man and she promised that in due time, she will bring to me the man, and together with her, we will try to

convince him to act as a state witness and help us in the solution of the case. xxxx Q. Atty. Sacaguing, were you able to interview this alleged witness?

WITNESS SACAGUING: A. No, sir. ATTY. ONGKIKO: Q. Why not? WITNESS SACAGUING: A. Because Jessica Alfaro was never able to comply with her promise to bring the man to me. She told me later that she could not and the man does not like to testify. ATTY. ONGKIKO: Q. All right, and what happened after that? WITNESS SACAGUING: A. She told me, easy lang kayo, Sir, if I may quote, easy lang Sir, huwag kayong COURT: How was that? WITNESS SACAGUING: A. Easy lang, Sir. Sir, relax lang, Sir, papapelan ko, papapelan ko na lang yan. xxxx ATTY. ONGKIKO: Q. All right, and what was your reaction when Ms. Alfaro stated that papapelan ko na lang yan? WITNESS SACAGUING: A. I said, hindi puwede yan, kasi hindi ka naman eye witness. ATTY. ONGKIKO: Q. And what was the reply of Ms. Alfaro? WITNESS SACAGUING:

A.

Hindi siya nakakibo, until she went away. (TSN, May 28, 1996, pp. 49-50, 58, 77-79)

Quite significantly, Alfaro never refuted Sacaguings above testimony. But what of Alfaros highly detailed and graphic account of the incident? Didnt that betoken the truth? Only the truth that she was an avid newspaper reader, and the newspapers reported the event with dizzying details and she was given access by her NBI handlers to all the reports and evidence found in the crime scene, said the Court. Was it possible for Alfaro to lie with such abundant details some of which even tallied with the physical evidence at the scene of the crime? No doubt, yes, said the Court.
Since Alfaro hanged out at the NBI offices and practically lived

there, it was not too difficult for her to hear of these evidentiary details and gain access to the documents. Alfaro also gave some improbable details to give her account the patina of credibility, such as adding that Hubert Webb threw a rock at the glass on the door to break into the house when the door had in fact been left open by his alleged girlfriend/victim Carmela and he was already through raping and killing her and her mother and younger sister. Well, what if Webb wanted to create the suspicion of a break-in?

The Court noted that the house had been ransacked as though by burglars but Alfaro had testified that the worst one of the accused had done was rifle through Mrs. Vizcondes handbag searching for the key to the house whose door had been left unlocked and they were inside already. Why look for a way into a house you are in already? The Court asked of Alfaros testimony and could find only one answer: that was yet another detail she made up. The Court expressed shock that this and other self-contradictory and nonsensical details were not appreciated by the trial court and the Court of Appeals, especially the incident of her beating up someone in a police lineup for threatening her and finding out she was beating up the wrong person. She ran berserk, slapping and kicking Michael, exclaiming: How can I forget your face. We just saw each other in a disco one month ago and you told me then that you will kill me. As it turned out, he was not Miguel Rodriguez, the accused in this case. [The] thing about a lying witness: her story lacks sense or suffers from inherent inconsistencies. An understanding of the nature of things and the common behavior of people will help expose a lie. And it has an abundant presence in this case. The Court also found it improbable that a habitual drug user could have so vivid and perfect a recollection. Obviously, justices who voted to acquit Hubert Webb et al have had no experiences with the mind-enhancing properties of drugs. Why do you think law students take mind and memory enhancers to cram for the finals and especially for the Bar exams and stay

drugged so as to stay alert to answer the questions by maintaining the chemical condition in which they crammed all that learning. If the justices who voted to acquit because they do not believe that drug takers can think clearly, what of the justices who voted to retain the conviction? Is it because they believe or they know that drugs do not impair memory or reasoning even if it wreaks havoc with tastelike having sex with the ugly guy next to you in the car? And what of the four justices who abstained? They didnt want the public to think of them one way or the other? After all there is a large constituency of druggies out there who might take offense at so derogatory a view of their mental capacities; quite a few are media owners or children thereof. The Court also dismissed the corroborating testimonies of village security guards who could not remember every detail of everything that happened to pass by their guard post that night. In the Courts view, it is all or nothing when it comes to memory. Either you remember everything or you remember nothing but snatches of recollection are not possible. This is the weak part of the Courts reasoning, along with its attempts to give psychological explanations to prove the improbability of events that, on their face, anyway, could not have happened according to the laws of physics, commonly observed human behavior in such circumstances, and are narrated as eye-witnessed events by someone who did not deny that she told the NBI she wasnt in the crime scene in the first place to witness anything with her eyesbut someone else was whom she could not convince to come out.

The final corroborating witness the Court dismissed was the laundrywoman who claimed that she washed the bloodied shirt of Hubert Webb, which she said she had picked up, along with other dirty laundry, from the various rooms in the house at 4 a.m. What a woman, even a laundrywoman, would be doing in anyones bedroom at that early hour other than picking up her own clothes seemed beyond the Courts circle of credible belief. No one now recalls what the laundrywoman looked like or her age or if she was at all fetching like Mislang, President Noynoy Aquinos malaprop speechwriter. Was the US Secretary of State bought by Freddie Webb? Said the Court: March 9, 1991, Webb left for San Francisco, California, with his Aunt Gloria on board United Airlines Flight 808. Before boarding his plane, Webb passed through the Philippine Immigration booth at the airport to have his passport cleared and stamped. Immigration Officer, Ferdinand Sampol checked Webbs visa, stamped, and initialed his passport, and let him pass through. He was listed on the United Airlines Flights Passenger Manifest.

On arrival at San Francisco, Webb went through the U.S. Immigration where his entry into that country was recorded. Thus, the U.S. Immigration Naturalization Service, checking with its Non-immigrant Information System, confirmed Webb's entry into the U.S. on March 9, 1991. Webb presented at the trial the INS Certification issued by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the computer-generated print-out of

the US-INS indicating Webb's entry on March 9, 1991, and the US-INS Certification dated August 31, 1995, authenticated by the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, correcting an earlier August 10, 1995 Certification. The rest of Webbs US alibi consists of testimonies from friends and relatives with whom he stayed and friends whom he met while in the US. They could all be lyingbut Madeleine Albright? Why? Webb also presented documentary proof of a car his parents had purchased for him and police traffic tickets he got while driving it.
xxx As with his trip going to the U.S., Webb also went through both the

U.S. and Philippine immigrations on his return trip. Thus, his departure from the U.S. was confirmed by the same certifications that confirmed his entry. Furthermore, a Diplomatic Note of the U.S. Department of State with enclosed letter from Acting Director Debora A. Farmer of the Records Operations, Office of Records of the US-INS stated that the Certification dated August 31, 1995 is a true and accurate statement. And when he boarded his plane, the Passenger Manifest of Philippine Airlines Flight No. 103, certified by Agnes Tabuena confirmed his return trip.

When he arrived in Manila, Webb again went through the Philippine Immigration. In fact, the arrival stamp and initial on his passport indicated

his return to Manila on October 27, 1992. This was authenticated by Carmelita Alipio, the immigration officer who processed Webbs reentry Still, neither the trial court and the Court of Appeals were convinced and rejected Webbs alibi as weak. Their reason is uniform: Webbs alibi cannot stand against Alfaros positive identification of him. Because of this, to the lower courts, Webbs denial and alibi were fabricated. So it was Alfaros word against Albrights documentation. Alfaro won and justice, in the view of the Court, lost along with 15 years in the lives of the convicted Webb and his companions.
But not all denials and alibis should be regarded as fabricated.

Indeed, if the accused is truly innocent, he can have no other defense but denial and alibi. So how can such accused penetrate a mind that has been made cynical by the rule drilled into his head that a defense of alibi is a hangmans noose in the face of a witness positively swearing, I saw him do it. Most judges believe that such assertion automatically dooms an alibi which is so easy to fabricate. This quick stereotype thinking, however, is distressing. For how else can the truth that the accused is really innocent have any chance of prevailing over such a stone-cast tenet?

A lying witness can make as positive an identification as a truthful witness can. The lying witness can also say as forthrightly and unequivocally, He did it! without blinking an eye.

To overturn the defense of alibi, the contradicting testimony must come from a credible witness, and witness is credible based on her past. Her word is worth, to rephrase the Court, its weight in goldor in lead or cow dung if you wish though there would have to be a lot of that given the density of gold. What kind of past did Jessica Alfaro have? The Court said that it was that of a stool pigeon for the cops. Having established the witnesss credibility by a personal past of truth-telling, a credible witnesss story must be, said the Courtunhelpfully, we might addbelievable and not inherently contrived. Well, even lies are believable if youre a good liar. Look at our past presidents. Look at the present crop of presidential probables? And what does not inherently contrived mean? As opposed to outwardly invented? Or did the Court really mean to say what it has been arguing all along, that Jessica Alfaros testimony was, by its own internal logic, selfcontradictory and by common human experience, improbable and probably fabricatedas opposed to the indubitable documentation of the US Secretary of State that Hubert Webb was in a manner of speaking in her bosom when the crime was committed. A witness who testifies about something she never saw runs into inconsistencies and makes bewildering claims, said the Court.

Actually, Jessica Alfaro never contradicted herself. Her narrative was a seamless narration of stuff she could have read in the newspapers and could have been fed by her NBI handlers. The problem with her testimony was not its inconsistencies or improbabilities nor even the vagaries of her behavior nor the swings of her emotions. It was the fact that she did not deny that all she claimed to have witness really came according to her from someone who had really witnessed all the things she had testified tobut which she herself had not seen and which she was passing off as her own eyewitness account to save the NBI the trouble of finding that witness. In short, it was a fight between what she admitted was hearsay and could very well have been not even that but an NBI fabricationand the documentary proof of Madeleine Albright. We think, nay, we would bet the farmif we had oneon the testimony of the US government than on the words of a police asset with a big ass at that, if memory serves us. On the other hand, said the Court, [t]o establish alibi, the accused must prove by positive, clear, and satisfactory evidence that (a) he was present at another place at the time of the perpetration of the crime, and (b) that it was physically impossible for him to be at the scene of the crime. Against all the quibbling about original passports, proper

authentication, etc., that the trial and appellate courts made so much of so as to dismiss Huberts alibi, the Supreme Court chose to believe:

The U.S. Immigration certification and the computer print-out of Webbs arrival in and departure from that country were authenticated by no less than the Office of the U.S. Attorney General and the State Department.
The U.S. Immigration certification and computer print-out, the

official certifications of which have been authenticated by the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, merely validated the arrival and departure stamps of the U.S. Immigration office on Webbs passport. They have the same evidentiary value. The officers who issued these certifications need not be presented in court to testify on them. Their trustworthiness arises from the sense of official duty and the penalty attached to a breached duty, in the routine and disinterested origin of such statement and in the publicity of the record. America trumps native courts, is how the proper headline should go and rightly so. The Courts conclusion deserves full quotation so as not to lose any of its flavor. In our criminal justice system, what is important is, not whether the court entertains doubts about the innocence of the accused since an open mind is willing to explore all possibilities, but whether it entertains a reasonable, lingering doubt as to his guilt. For, it would be a serious mistake to send an innocent man to jail where such kind of doubt hangs on to ones inner being, like a piece of meat lodged immovable between teeth. And what is this rank piece of meat the Court is referring to? Exactly what this article divined: the nonexistent eyewitness for whom Jessica Alfaro

claimed to be standing in and delivery hearsay evidence in court. Hearsay, if not fabricated evidence, that sent Hubert Webb and friends to jail for life of which they already served 15 years. As the Court so piquantly put it in italics: Will the Court send the accused to spend the rest of their lives in prison on the testimony of an NBI asset who proposed to her handlers that she take the role of the witness to the Vizconde massacre that she could not produce? No way, Jos! It would be a white Christmas for Hubert and his friends, and not a black and grey striped one as in 19 Christmases past if you include the four years they spent in detention during the protracted trial of their case as the NBI made up one new story after another to cover up for the biggest crime of all: we never catch the real criminals in our country, although we do elect some of them. Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr.