EDITORIAL - Sloppiness

For whatever it’s worth, the government is making another stab at getting Roger Lawrence Strunk extradited from the United States. Officials of the Department of Justice announced this as the only daughter of actress Nida Blanca demanded the resignation of National Bureau of Investigation Director Reynaldo Wycoco for bungling the probe of the murder. President Arroyo, responding to public cries of dismay, ordered the DOJ to exhaust all legal remedies to get Strunk, who stands accused of planning the murder of his wife.

Justice Undersecretary Merceditas Gutierrez told a Senate hearing last Tuesday that "all is not lost" in the extradition case. All concerns raised by Sacramento, California magistrate Gregory Hollows, who rejected the extradition request last Nov. 12, will be addressed and all evidence needed will be presented in court, Gutierrez promised senators.

Few people, however, are holding their breath over a second attempt to seek Strunk’s extradition. It’s not the first time that sloppiness has marked a government investigation. The NBI also famously persecuted Acsa Ramirez, the cashier who blew the whistle on a multimillion-peso scam at the Land Bank of the Philippines. NBI officials refused to let Ramirez off the hook even when her superiors at the bank and members of the Anti-Money Laundering Council said she had violated no law.

This is the problem when the principal concern of investigators is pleasing their boss and posing for a photo op instead of ferreting out the truth. This shoot-from-the-hip attitude of criminal investigation has led not only to the harassment of innocent people but also the failure to solve crimes – including celebrated cases such as the murder of Nida Blanca. Will appealing the extradition case, or even seeking a new hearing in a different US court, as the DOJ is reportedly planning to do, make a difference? Not if the same pieces of evidence gathered by the same investigators are presented.