THE lawyers of Chief Justice Renato Corona on Tuesday asked the Senate’s impeachment court to stop the House’s prosecutors from engaging in a fishing expedition or offering as evidence documents and testimony accusing the chief magistrate of acquiring ill-gotten wealth.
The defense counsels led by retired Supreme Court Justice Serafin Cuevas criticized the prosecution for introducing an entirely new charge into Article 2 of the impeachment complaint, which only claims that Corona failed to disclose his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth.
As a result, the defense panel appealed to the senator-judges to expunge from the record all evidence presented by the prosecution on Corona’s alleged properties.
The defense lawyers said the discussion of Article 2, which refers to suspicions and accusations of ill-gotten wealth, showed the complainants had no personal knowledge “of the ultimate facts concerning suggestions of graft and corruption” at the time the complaint was filed.
“This now explains their desperate and belated use of this honorable court’s subpoena power to gather evidence for the very first time to prove their case,” Corona’s lawyers said in a memo. “Unfortunately, and to [Chief Justice] Corona’s extreme prejudice, these proceedings have become an illegal ‘fishing expedition.’ This should never be allowed.”
The defense panel made the appeal after the prosecution claimed that the allegations of ill-gotten wealth were deemed included in their impeachment complaint under Article 2 despite an admission that they had not seen Corona’s statements of assets.
Corona’s lawyers argued that allowing the prosecution to have its way would be “irrelevant, improper” and violate his constitutional rights.
Corona’s statements from 2002 to 2011, and the land titles on the condominium units and other pieces of property under his name and those of his family, have already been admitted as evidence before the impeachment court.
But the defense lawyers invoked the constitutional right of the accused to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against Corona.
They drew support from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, which criticized the prosecutors for presenting evidence on charges not specified in Article 2 of the impeachment complaint.
Any further evidence on the chief justice’s alleged properties would be “clearly and grossly irrelevant, untenable under tenets of traditionally accepted trial practices, unfair to those concerned and offensive to the sense of common decency,” said lawyer Dennis Habawel, a spokesman for the national lawyers association.
But the civil society group Bantay Gloria Network on Tuesday urged the Corona camp to stop “lying” about the source of money he supposedly used to acquire his real estate holdings.
A spokeswoman for the group, Risa Hontiveros, cited published reports saying Corona received P11 million as a cash advance from a company owned by his wife’s family, Basa-Guidote Enterprises Inc., which had ceased to operate in 2007. She said Corona could not have raised P11 million from a company that had already ceased to exist.
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