FORMER senator Leila de Lima has asked the Muntinlupa city regional trial court to junk the third and last drug case against her, saying the prosecution failed to present evidence to prove her guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
The third and last case accuses De Lima of allegedly accepting bribe money from convicted drug lords at the New Bilibid Prison during her term as justice secretary to help finance her 2016 senatorial campaign.
In a 52-page demurrer to evidence filed on Wednesday, De Lima asked Muntinlupa RTC Branch 206 Presiding Judge Gener Gito to acquit her because the prosecution has failed to prove her guilt.
“This Demurrer to Evidence seeks the dismissal of the charge against herein Accused without further need of presentation of her evidence on the ground that based on the prosecution’s testimonial and documentary evidence duly admitted by the Honorable Court, the prosecution has not only failed to present sufficient evidence that would sustain a judgment of conviction beyond reasonable doubt, it has more so failed to present strong evidence of the accused’s guilt,” the motion read.
De Lima’s camp was referring to the court’s grant of her bail petition in November 2023 that allowed her to regain provisional liberty after spending almost seven years in detention.
In his order allowing De Lima to post bail, Gito pointed to the lack of substantial evidence presented by the prosecution, noting that her guilt was not sufficiently established by her accusers.
Gito also said the prosecution’s witnesses were not able to establish that there exists a conspiracy among the accused to commit illegal drug trading.
In her motion, De Lima said many of the prosecution’s witnesses have already retracted their allegations against her, including former Bureau of Corrections chief Rafael Ragos and most of the Bilibid inmates who earlier linked her to the illegal drugs trade.
The other witnesses who previously recanted or informed the court of their decision to withdraw their testimonies against De Lima include high-profile Bilibid inmates German Agojo, Tomas Donina, Jaime Patcho, Peter Co, Engelbert Durano, Jerry Pepino, Hans Anton Tan, Nonito Arile and Rodolfo Magleo, self-confessed drug lord Kerwin Espinosa, bodyguard Ronnie Dayan, and retired police general Jerry Valeroso.
De Lima insisted that the witnesses called by the prosecution failed to prove the charge of conspiracy to commit illegal drug trading.
“The prosecution has completely failed to prove the guilt of herein accused beyond reasonable doubt… Quite the contrary, the evidence of the prosecution in fact nears complete demolition…,” De Lima also said.
“They also failed to convey personal knowledge that herein accused herself came into an agreement with her other co-accused and the Bilibid ‘drug lords’ – whoever they may be since not a single one of them is indicted in this case – to trade in illegal drugs using cellular phones and other gadgets and devices,” she added.
The recantation of the prosecution’s witnesses, De Lima argued, proves the “fabricated nature” of the testimonies of the Bilibid inmates.
“The outlandish and fantastic accusations of the NBP bail witnesses are not corroborated by other witnesses and remain to be tall tales of convicted criminals unworthy of beliefs,” she stressed.
“Even assuming the testimonies of the prosecution’s bail witnesses are not impaired by their impeachability as convicts and the incredibility of their stories, the same are still not worthy of belief due to their inherent contradictions and inconsistencies,” she also said, adding these are the hallmarks of “fabricated, manufactured, invented, coached, and rehearsed testimonies of recruited fake witnesses.”
Likewise, De Lima said the prosecution also “miserably failed” not only in alleging but also in presenting evidence to show what specific actions she committed in pursuit of the supposed conspiracy to commit drug trading.
“An analysis of the entire evidence of the prosecution shows the absence of any specific drug transaction and object evidence that is the subject matter of the prosecution‘s accusations. In other words, even in a best-case scenario for the theory of the prosecution, the evidence does not show any act of drug trading on the part of accused De Lima,” she said.
De Lima has repeatedly denied any link to the illegal drugs trade, saying that the charges against her were only filed because she earned the ire of then president Rodrigo Duterte due to her opposition to his administration’s human rights abuses and killings associated with the drug war.
