Déjà vu
| FRONTLINE |
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| Ninez Cacho-Olivares |
Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, a former associate justice of the Supreme Court (SC), in her bid to revive the plunder case against former Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia while seeking the court’s reversal of the plea bargain agreement entered into between Garcia and Morales’ office, is in essence asking the Sandiganbayan to violate the principle of double jeopardy.
Wrong Sandiganbayan decision or no, the fact remains that Garcia, after agreeing to the plea bargain, was arraigned and convicted on a lesser charge of direct bribery and money laundering, which means that the plunder case no longer applies to him.
To revive the plunder case against Garcia would then have to be a matter of double jeopardy, yet this long held principle is what a former SC justice wants done by the court.
Such a judicial mistake was already committed during the tenure of Noynoy’s mother, Cory Aquino, when, shortly after the 1986 Edsa revolt that catapulted her to the presidency, the already acquitted soldiers who stood accused of having planned and executed the assassination of Ninoy Aquino at the airport, were again tried for the same crime before the same Sandiganbayan, as approved by the high court and in a particularly political partisan atmosphere, then with newly appointed Aquino justices who then convicted the already acquitted soldiers..... MORE
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110918com2.html
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