At least 193 minor drug offenders represented by the Public Attorney’s Office have asked the Supreme Court to allow them to plead guilty to lesser offenses through plea bargaining.
At a Zoom media briefing, PAO chief Persida Acosta said the “indigent” petitioners, who have spent years in city and municipal jails, have filed motions for intervention in the Edwin Reafor case, asking the High Court to reconsider its decision allowing prosecutors, not the judges, to approve plea bargaining in less serious drug cases.
“They are just first-time offenders whose cases are similarly situated to Reafor,” she told reporters.
“We have a databank at PAO that could identify notorious drug offenders. PAO is investigating the character of a person applying for plea bargaining,” she said.
The high court’s Second Division issued a seven-page decision nullifying an Aug. 24, 2018 order of the Naga City Regional Trial Court that granted the motion of drug suspect Edwin Reafor to plea bargain due to the opposition of the prosecution.
The Reafor decision is unconstitutional for violation of the clauses of equal protection and due process of the 1987 Constitution, independence of the judiciary and rule-making power of the Supreme Court, and supremacy of the Constitution, Acosta said.
Last May, PAO filed an omnibus motion with the Supreme Court to refer the matter to en banc for oral arguments and reconsideration.
It also filed similar omnibus motions for its clients Naci Borras and Edgar Majingcar, questioning the constitutionality of the decision of the court’s Second Division which was promulgated on Nov. 16, 2020.
Amid the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Acosta expressed alarm over the further spread of the virus inside the country’s overcrowded jails.
“We should arrest and jail the masterminds, the drug traffickers and the syndicate members but not the first-time offenders of lesser crime,” she said.