Imperfecta sed lex
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I was with the late Ed Ocampo when his fellow basketball Olympian, then Rep. Freddie Webb, mumbled, his hair disheveled and misty eyes cast downward, “My son… my good son Hubert… is innocent… I was with him in America.” I then sensed Webb was telling the truth. Maybe it was the way he looked and spoke. Maybe it was the way the unfurling evidence appeared to increasingly favor his son as the “trial of the century” wore on through the nerve-wracking weeks and months.
But people generally believed otherwise. To them, Hubert Webb was guilty, period. He was the owner of a surname so associated with privilege that he had to be an abusive brat who fiendishly raped and murdered Carmela Vizconde — her mother and younger sister being fatally waylaid in the process. Hubert Webb’s head just had to roll.
Jessica Alfaro was the only “eyewitness” the prosecution presented to identify Webb as the malefactor. She submitted two sworn statements, one: She was outside the bedroom but saw the crimes through an opening of the door, and two: She was inside the room and saw everything. I then thought Webb would be acquitted solely on this flagrant inconsistency. But I was wrong. Instead I learned that sometimes the human psyche condemns others for being privileged.
Hubert’s principal defense was an alibi, i.e. he was not at the scene of the crime because he was in America on or about the day they were committed. Per US Immigration documents, he was then in America. The Rev. Fr. Sonny Ramirez, religious pop star Gary Valenciano and lawyer Antonio Carpio — who would proceed to be today’s Supreme Court associate Justice — separately testified that Webb was then in America..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101202com6.html
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