Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla on Thursday said there is a need to clear those who have been named in the drug lists of former President Rodrigo Duterte but have been found to not be involved in the illegal drugs trade.
“We need to clear those who have to be cleared,” Remulla said during a joint press conference of the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior and Local Government. “It is unjust if they are not cleared.”
This developed as 77 percent of drug cases filed from 2016 to July 2022 are still pending, Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos Jr. said Thursday, with the Justice Department taking steps to improve the conviction rate.
Owing to this, Remulla called for a re-training of law enforcers in remedial and substantive laws and closer collaboration with state prosecutors to improve their conviction rate.
The Justice chief noted that Duterte’s drug lists were considered “part of the intelligence information within the system.”
“There are some persons in the list who were found to be innocent or had no drug links. If their narcotics trade involvement has been validated, what can we do? Intelligence has validated it and there is case buildup,” he said.
During his term, Duterte released lists of persons reportedly involved in the illegal drug trade, including politicians, government officials, and law enforcement agents.
Abalos said of the total 291,393 cases, some 22,000 ended with convictions, 5,753 were dismissed, and 223,579 are pending.
“We have a lot of drug cases… and these should be monitored,” he said in the joint DOJ-DILG press conference.
Abalos said the Interior department is seeking to reassess police investigators and review how they are recruited. Of the 22,774 police investigators in the country, only 123 are law graduates, he added.
“We will hold seminars. We will have a reassessment of what’s happening on the ground. We will retrain, we will supplement, we need to see who is qualified,” he said.
“It shouldn’t be just because you volunteered even though the job of being an investigator is not for you. That’s my personal point of view. There should be a reassessment of those who were chosen,” Abalos added.
He stressed that a probe conducted by an investigator would determine the conviction of cases in courts.
“For me this is very, very important. Because this single, important data, or act done by an investigator would determine, again, I emphasize, the result not only in the Department of Justice, but likewise, whether the case would be for conviction or acquittal in courts,” Abalos said.
Meanwhile, Remulla said retraining law enforcement units in remedial and substantive law would improve the country’s 25% conviction rate for criminal cases filed in court.
“Remedial meaning procedure. From surveillance to effecting and arrest, preserving the scene of the crime, processing a scene of the crime, and processing the evidence. All of this must be restudied, reincorporated, and of course, reinjected into the system in a more widespread manner,” he said.
Abalos said so many cases are dismissed due to the lack of witnesses.
To prevent this, he suggested assigning an employee to the Department of Justice to join drug raids and serve as a witness, similar to what they did in Mandaluyong City during his term as mayor there.
He said he would appeal to the League of Cities of the Philippines to assign witnesses to the DOJ.
“I will be requesting from the mayors and from other public officials that they might copy the same to help the cases. This could help because a lot of cases are dismissed,” he said.
On Duterte’s drug list, both Abalos and Remulla vowed that those truly innocent would be eventually cleared.
“We are clearing those that we can clear. But if you are validated, what can we do? They are in the intelligence and there is a case build-up. But for those that we can clear, we clear them. It will be unjust if we don’t,” Remulla said.
“In looking for ways at how we can improve the justice system, what we really saw is the certainty of punishment for those who commit crimes, so we look at what has to be done,” he added.
Nonetheless, the DOJ chief acknowledged that there is also a need to clarify the quasi-judicial function of state prosecutors under Rule 112 of the Rules of Court considering that the DOJ is part of the Executive department.
State prosecutors are under the National Prosecution Service (NPS), currently headed by Prosecutor General Benedicto Malcontento.
“Quasi-judicial functions should not take precedence over our mandate,” he said.
“The prosecutors are working closely with the police, that’s what we want to happen. They are on the same side and should not be blaming each other. Our emphasis is on the prosecution as an executive function,” Remulla added.