The women were found dead with multiple stab wounds and no witnesses, murder weapons or motive have been uncovered. The SC, however, held that by failing to prove the existence of a relationship between Hubert and Carmela; and that the lover that Alfaro claimed that Carmela had met did not come forward in public or in court, her testimonies about the accused and the victims were like a piece of jigsaw puzzle trimmed to fit into the shape on the board but does not belong because it clashes with the surrounding pieces and the lover was a mere ghost of the imagination of Alfaro, the woman who made a living informing on criminals. As to the failure to present the forensic evidence and its subsequent loss, the SC held: the semen specimen taken from Carmela cannot possibly lie. He and six others spent 15 years in jail. Sacaguing broke the guidelines in taking affidavits from witnesses. Estrellita, Carmela and Jennifer Vizconde. Alfaro claimed that Hubert was angry at Carmela thus raping and murdering her, her younger sister and her mother, to supposedly revenge her unfaithfulness to him. vs. People of the Philippines et al., 1997, G.R. God does not teach us to retaliate. Guillermo Lorenzo Guilor Eleazar, recently appointed chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), bows out on Nov. 13 this year when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 56. June 30, 1991 for a bicycle he bought from a store in Orange County, Los Angeles, California. Sign up now! Webb was among the nine people convicted by Paranaque Regional Trial Court Branch 274 Presiding Judge Amelita Tolentino in January 2000 for the killings. The prescription period does not matter to me, its just a date, he said. He also claimed to have heard Hubert shout, Putang ina nyo! Equal protection of the law is fundamental in the countrys Constitution. Am I dismayed by the decision of the (Supreme Court)? Call 896 6000. Envy aliens who can avoid PH; pity Pinoys who are stuck here. The readers will notice soon enough the brevity of each topic. I went to the US to check on senator Webbs allegations I paid for my fare and accommodation, by the way and found that, indeed, Hubert was there when the Vizconde women were being butchered at their home in Paraaque. [5] The other defendants were convicted by the Paraaque Regional Trial Court, which the Court of Appeals affirmed. Given the financial resources and political influence of his family, it was not unlikely that Webb could have traveled back to the Philippines before June 2930, 1991 and then departed for the US again, and returning to the Philippines in October 1992. For example, it rejected as not impartial the corroborating testimony of Augusto Santoss brother-in-law that he was at the hospital with him when Abadilla was murdered. InVizconde case: The SC applied two tests in rejecting the positive identification of Alfaro: firstly, the credibility of a witness; secondly, the testimony should be believable, not inherently contrived. The Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption(VACC) asked Justice Antonio Carpio and his cousin Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales to take a leave while the case is being decided to avoid undue influence on the court's decision. LIKE me to support Mr. Vizconde No. Apart from Alejo, earlier there was another witness, Merlito Herbas. 16:53. She said that when she entered Hubert's room, she saw him wearing only his pants, awake and smoking in bed. December 14, 2010:http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2010/december2010/176389.htm The most significant topic that Ive ever written about and which I personally got involved in was the Vizconde massacre. The defense questioned Alfaro's credibility noting that she admitted to being under the influence of drugs when she allegedly witnessed the crime and had made inconsistent statements on her two affidavits. Alfaro said she was then having reservations when she first executed the first affidavit and held back vital information due to her natural reaction of mistrust. Firstly, in the Vizconde case, the SC still held as credible the corroborating testimonies of the witnesses favouring Hubert Jeffrey who are mostly his relatives and friends in support of his defence of alibi. No. G/F, 52 Princess Margaret Road The SCs decision affirming the guilty verdict by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Quezon City on the Abadilla Five, the five men accused in the murder of police colonel Rolando Abadilla on June 13, 1996, is already the subject of a final appeal filed on October 8, 2010. Forensic evidence: In Vizconde case it cannot lie, in Abadilla case it is inconclusive. al, 1995, G.R. All rights are reserved. Let the love of God prevail. Seven justices based its decision on the following points: Webb, citing Brady v. Maryland, said "that he is entitled to outright acquittal on the ground of violation of his right to due process given the States failure to produce on order of the Court either by negligence or willful suppression the semen specimen taken from Carmela." 5. She took advantage of her familiarity with these details to include in her testimony. The court also amended the award of damages from 100,000 pesos to 200,000 pesos, and also upheld the conviction of Biong as accessory to the crime "by abusing his public functions to conceal and destroy the physical evidence in order to prevent the discovery of the crime and by allowing the destruction of the physical evidence, Biong facilitated the escape of the principal accused. To find out more, please click this link. Please try again. Two of the accused have also been acquitted by the RTC on the basis of their defence of alibis. As a host of the program that carries my surname, I and my all-female staff have handled complaints from citizens, concerning abusive or arrogant policemen and other government functionaries. While the SC rejected Alfaros testimony being not a credible witness, it held Alejo still a credible witness despite the inconsistencies in his testimony. He alleged that Webb bought illegal drugs from him on two other occasions in May 1991. The SC required this test as necessary before a testimony of positive identification could be accepted as credible and with merit. Her mother, Estrellita, 47, and sister, Jennifer, 7, were also killed. And while justice seems elusive, life must go on, Vizcondes grandniece Katherine Asuncion said, reading from a family statement. While washing Hubert Webb's clothing, Gaviola said she noticed fresh bloodstains on his shirt. A lying witness can make as positive an identification as a truthful witness can. But feeling uneasy, she decided to go up to the stockroom near Hubert's room to see what he was doing. The Vizconde murders remained unsolved for almost four years, until 1995 when eyewitness Jessica Alfaro, a self-confessed drug addict, came forward on April 28, 1995, to shed light on the massacre. June 14, 1993 - Vizconde Massacre solved; 'brains,' three others fall Police finish investigation of the Vizconde case with the arrest of the suspected mastermind and three other suspects,. People vs. Bello, G.R. For those who havent heard aboutIsumbong, the public service program started at Radyo Veritas on June 1, 1991. Cruz, Manila accompanying his brother-in-law, Jonas Padel Ayhon, whose wife had just given birth; and Rameses de Jesus and Lenido Lumanog had just left Manila for Mabalacat, Pampanga where they stayed until the evening of June 14. We have ruled that accused-appellant may not invoke the acquittal of the other conspirators to merit the reversal of his conviction for murder. Rodolfo Sison, the police investigator originally assigned to the case in 1991. Alfaro, upon explaining on how the house was ransacked, (the Paraaque police had earlier blamed house robbers as suspects), said that Ventura was looking for the front-door key and the car key. All of us who have cases in court, dont we realize that if your opponent has money, brace yourself. TRUTH OUT, HEALING BEGINS. But in the Abadilla case, not only did the SC affird the CAs ruling in rejecting the defence of alibi, it did not also question the CAs formulation of conjectures on which it based its judgement. A second movie, The Untold Story: Vizconde Massacre II May The Lord Be With Us, was released in 1994 and starred Vina Morales as Carmela and Joko Daz as an assailant. Besides the horror itself, the suspected perpetrators included high-society figures. [18], In her decision, Tolentino described the testimony of defense witnesses as full of inconsistencies and biased. References: Those initially jailed for. A news report on Thursday in Business Mirror that headlined Senate grills defense brass on plans for EDCA expansion, sites raised much curiosity for its sheer lack of detailed information. InAbadilla case: The SC affirmed the CAs judgement as inconclusive the use of forensic evidence, for example, the fingerprints and ballistic test results, showing that none of the five accused had their fingerprints match to those extracted from the murder victims car. Biong was released from jail on November 30, 2010, after serving his sentence. [25][26], On December 14, 2010, the Supreme Court reversed the earlier judgment of the lower court and Court of Appeals and acquitted seven of the nine accused, including Hubert Webb, finding that the prosecution failed to prove that the accused were guilty beyond reasonable doubt. Alejos testimonies in open court were also not consistent to what he had said to the police investigators immediately after the murder. October 1, 1996 Judge Amelita Tolentino of the Paraaque RTC rejected 132 of the defense's 142 pieces of evidence. [19], The Court of Appeals' Third Division voted 32 to deny Webb's motion for reconsideration and upheld the ruling of Judge Tolentino on December 16, 2005. The Vizconde murders remained unsolved for almost four years, until eyewitness Jessica Alfaro, a self-confessed former drug addict, came forward on April 28, 1995, to shed light on the massacre. The SCs decision in acquitting all the accused in the Vizconde case has fundamental contradictions to its earlier decision affirming the guilty verdict of the accused in the Abadilla case. The passing away of Lauro Vizconde a few days ago does not close the sad chapter on the tragedy known as the Vizconde massacre. Both the SC and the CA affirmed the RTCs sentence of guilty verdict without applying the test on the credibility of a witness as they did in Vizconde case. Among the defense witnesses was Artemio Sacaguing, a former, now deceased NBI official who testified that Alfaro was an NBI asset who only volunteered to assume the role of the eyewitness when she could not produce the actual witness to the Vizconde killings. [29], The court also held that the testimony of the Webb's maid, Mila Gaviola, was also unreliable since she was not able to distinguish if it was Hubert whom she saw on June 30, 1991, nor "did she remember any of the details that happened in the household on the other days". The court also said the same for the issue of the garage light: she claimed that Ventura climbed the car's hood, using a chair, to turn the light off. The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) wishes to draw the attention of the Supreme Court (SC) of the Philippines to its recent decision on two well-known cases tried in the lower courts; the conviction in the Vizconde Massacre case was overturned while that of the Abadilla murder case was affirmed. Movie producers and directors rode the wave of public outcry by creating true-to-life films based on such heinous crimes.

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