The lawyer of convicted drug trafficker Mary Jane Veloso on Thursday said the Court of Appeals should have been more lenient and allowed them to take her deposition in Indonesia where she is languishing on death row.
Lawyer Edre Olalia, legal counsel of the Veloso family in the case they filed against her alleged illegal recruiters Maria Cristina Sergio and Julius Lacanilao before the Nueva Ecija Regional Trial Court, argued that Veloso’s situation is unique that it calls for judicial equity.
“Mary Jane’s situation is unique that calls for judicial equity, if not flexibility. Indeed, it warrants common sense or basic empathy. The bottom line is how in heaven’s name can we get to hear the side of a fellow compatriot who is behind bars and waiting in death row in a foreign land and who cannot come home for said purpose,” Olalia said.
Olalia also assailed the assertions made by Sergio and Lacanilao in opposing the deposition, saying it contradicts their repeated assertion that they want to confront her.
“Whatever happens to the fate of distressed overseas workers like her, in the meantime, may in large measure be attributable to a fixation for legal gobbledygook, an abstraction of lofty legal principles and procedure that is open to serious impressions that they are bereft of reality, compassion and a sincere search for justice in a case where time is of the essence,” Olalia lamented.
He said Sergio and Lacanilao are invoking esoteric and archaic legal argumentations to prevent the taking of the deposition.
In a ruling issued last May 22, the CA’s Eleventh Division permanently stopped the deposition of Veloso by issuing an injunction order against the implementation of the Feb. 13, 2017 resolution of Nueva Ecija RTC Branch 88 Judge Anarica Castillo-Reyes allowing the deposition.
Sergio and Lacanilao, who are facing human trafficking charges filed by the family of Veloso, earlier argued that securing a written deposition would be prejudicial to their constitutional rights to confront the witnesses face to face which they added is guaranteed under Section 14, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution. They stressed that allowing the deposition would also be contrary to the previous ruling of the Supreme Court in Vda De Manguerra vs Risos wherein the high court categorically declared that taking of deposition through written interrogatories is applicable only in civil cases and not in criminal cases.
The deposition would have been administered by Philippine Consular official in Yogyakarta, Indonesia where Veloso is imprisoned and to be personally observed by the respondent judge.
Veloso’s camp maintained that she was duped by Sergio and Lacanilao into bringing the drug-laden
luggage to Indonesia in 2010 where she was arrested upon her arrival at the Yogyakarta airport.
The death sentence on Veloso was temporarily put on halt last April 29, 2015 after then President Aquino appealed her case to Indonesian President Joko Widodo.