Lawyer sorry for absence during case promulgation

A lawyer has apologized to the court for his absence during the promulgation of the criminal case against his clients.

In a two-page explanation, Paul Clarence Oaminal said it was not his intention to disrespect the court when he failed to appear when judgment was handed down on couple Rolando Cuico and Theresa Castro who were sentenced to life imprisonment and fined P3 million for qualified trafficking in persons last July 20.

Oaminal said he did not receive the official notice from the court regarding the new schedule of promulgation of judgment.  The court’s ruling was supposed to be handed down last June but was instead moved the month after.

“Taking cognizance of the foregoing circumstance, undersigned counsel most respectfully prays that this explanation satisfactorily convinces the reasonableness of his absence…that undersigned counsel has no slightest intention of courting the enmity of the Honorable Magistrate with his failure to attend the promulgation thus his deepest apologies to the latter,” the manifestation read.

Oaminal said that even during the original schedule of promulgation, he even requested another lawyer to represent him.

Regional Trial Court judge Raphael Yrastorza had directed Oaminal to explain his absence and why no disciplinary action should be meted against him.

Cuico and Castro were arrested during an entrapment operation in December 2004 by the National Bureau of Investigation for violation of Republic Act 9208.  Both were said to have supplied nine women, some of them minors, to agents of the NBI- Violence Against Women and Children Division who posed as customers in an uptown hotel.

The NBI agents, together with contemporaries from Manila, arrested them after receiving the P1,500 marked money supposedly as payment for the services of the women.

The girls said the accused ordered them to falsify their birth certificates to make it appear that they are already of legal age. — Joeberth M. Ocao/BRP