EDITORIAL - Consent to die

The victim’s father and one of the accused have died, which isn’t too surprising. It’s been nearly 11 years to the day law student Lenny Villa died from the severe beating he received as part of initiation rites of the Aquila Legis fraternity. When the verdict was finally handed down, it was a major disappointment for Villa’s mother Gerarda. Aquila Legis members will pay for their crime – all two of them. The Court of Appeals found only Fedelito Dizon and Artemio Villareal guilty of homicide and sentenced the two to 17 years in prison. Four were held liable only for slight physical injuries: Vincent Tecson, Junel Anthony Ama, Antonio Mariano Almeda and Renato Bantug Jr. They will spend 20 days in jail and pay P30,000 each in damages.

The remaining 19 were all acquitted, and some of their names are significant for their ties to the judiciary: Amante Purisima II is a nephew of retired Supreme Court Justice Fidel Purisima; Etienne Guerrero is the son of Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon Jesus Guerrero. From the start there were fears that the extensive reach of the Ateneo Law School’s Aquila Legis fraternity in the judiciary would be a major hindrance to the prosecution of the 26 law school students indicted for Villa’s death and severe beating of another neophyte, Bienvenido Marquez III. All 26 were convicted by Caloocan City Regional Trial Court Judge Adoracion Angeles, who later found herself facing a lawsuit that seemed to smack of harassment. During the Estrada administration, some of those convicted were found to be working at Malacañang.

The appellate court, in its ruling penned by Justice Eubolo Verzola, threw out the conspiracy angle in Villa’s death, pointing out that neophytes "willingly and volun-tarily" undergo hazing as part of initiation into a fraternity. "There can be no fraternity initiation without consenting neophytes," the ruling said. True enough, but that doesn’t make the decision any less disappointing, especially when you consider that the Villa family had to wait 11 years for it.

The decision not only effectively pins part of the blame for the tragedy on Villa himself, but also guarantees that his death will not discourage the violence that has been a hallmark of school fraternities in this country. The message to the brats with no outlet for adolescent testosterone is this: keep up the good work and beat the wits out of those neophytes, but watch those blows. There is no positive lesson to be learned from this case. All we have is a wasted life, and a wasted death.