Too many cases, too few justices

"SB" is supposed to be initials for "Sandiganbayan". For insiders, "SB" might as well stand for "slow boat" – to justice, that is. There’s good reason to think so, judging by two cases alone of the anti-graft court that landed in the news yesterday. In the first, only a year after Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia was indicted for plunder did the court finally issue arrest warrants for his co-accused wife and three sons. This means that only on Mar. 16, the day of arraignment and assuming the four will appear, may trial finally begin. In the second case, the court ruled only after 20 long years that government’s sequestration of four Lucio Tan companies, allegedly for ill-gotten wealth, was invalid after all. That the firms were cleared at last comes as a pyrrhic victory for Tan; all this time, interference by seizure agents had stifled their growth, and jeopardized smaller partners and employees.

Justice delayed is justice denied. No truer is the tenet than in roughly 2,000 cases pending at the Sandiganbayan, prominent of which are two dozen for graft by the Marcoses and cronies since 1986, plunder by Joseph Estrada and senator-son Jinggoy since 2001, and recovery of P303 million from the Garcias since 2005. The special court exclusively tries all cases of anomaly by public officials and their cohorts. That it takes six years and 10 months on average to resolve each case, as a World Bank study found, makes the Sandiganbayan the weakest link in the fight against corruption. The impact on society is egregious. People invariably begin to suspect hanky-panky in case handling, and thus lose faith in the judicial system.

Truth to tell, cases drag for many reasons. Prosecutors, for one, can be clumsy, cowered or corrupted. Ditto for judges. But that’s so easy to say yet hard to prove. At the Sandiganbayan, though, there’s one measurable cause for delay, and it’s in the statistics of too many cases to try (2000) by too few justices (15).

By law, five divisions make up the court, each with three magistrates sitting collegially. Any division thus is typically saddled with 400 cases. The justices have copied the Supreme Court way of assigning a ponente (lead jurist) to draft the decision for a case, but it has not eased the backlog. In May 2005 then-Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo, as lead investigator of all suits at the Sandiganbayan, noted that any case would be heard only twice every two months. It has worsened of late with a deluge of new graft complaints, the office of Chief Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio wails, to only one hearing every three months.

Naturally the perception outside the court is of unwillingness to mete justice either for the accuser or the accused. The Garcia case is an example. Marcelo had filed the rap as far back as April 2005, naming the general and his four kin as principals to plunder. Among the damning evidence was a sworn admission by Mrs. Garcia before US immigration agents of regularly receiving huge gifts and cash from defense contractors who dealt with her husband as Armed Forces comptroller. Too, 41 bank accounts and a dozen houses and lots were registered in the names of the three sons who had no visible means of income. Defense lawyers promptly questioned the listing of the wife and sons as accomplices, and asked for downgrading as mere accessories. Only one hearing was set in June 2005. Some members of the Second Division have since retired or were shuffled. Only last Wednesday did the case ponente determine that they need not decide yet on accomplice versus accessory, but only to place the four first under court jurisdiction, hence the arrest warrants. By then, many media commentaries and public expressions of dismay had been made about a seeming leniency towards rich defendants.

Yet the glaring statistics offer obvious solutions. Sen. Mar Roxas in fact has filed two remedial bills. The first is to form ten new Sandiganbayan divisions by hiring 30 more magistrates. With the court’s five divisions operating in 2004 on a budget of P115 million, it would need additional funding of P230 million. "Clearly, this is not a large amount to ask," wrote Marcelo last year to Senate justice committee chair Joker Arroyo, "if seen in terms of enhanced capacity of the Sandiganbayan to deter further acts of corruption that cost the nation billions of pesos."

The other Roxas bill would reassign to other criminal courts those graft cases that involve less than P1 million. This pertains to 793 of the 2,000 pending ones at the Sandiganbayan, mostly against town mayors or lower officials. At the same time, the bill would assign to only one Sandiganbayan justice, instead of the usual three, cases involving less than P5 million. At the time of Roxas’s filing, ten of the 13 justices (there were two vacancies) used to be trial judges with long experience in court ruling. The three others used to be practicing lawyers with extensive experience too in litigation.

If Congress only acts swiftly on the bills, it would be like lighting a candle against corruption instead of cursing the darkness.

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The Akdang Bayan writers’ group launches tonight two new books by its members: Order of the Poets, a collection of English and Filipino poems by Jaime Dasca Doble; and Sa Suso ng Liwanag, a novel (with CD format) by U.Z. Eliserio.

Accompanying the launch is the literary criticism series by award-winning writers: Epifanio San Juan Jr., Gelacio Guillermo, Alex Remollino, Emmanuel Dumlao, Arnold Azurin, and Reuel Aguila (editor).

Activities start at 7 p.m., at the Savarin restaurant, Kalayaan Avenue corner V. Luna Road, Diliman, Quezon City.

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