SENATOR Leila De Lima on Friday urged the Supreme Court (SC) to reconsider its October 10 decision dismissing her petition to nullify the arrest warrant in connection with her drug case.
In a 24-page motion for reconsideration, De Lima said she should be released from detention because the SC was divided on the nature and cause of the accusation against her.
"The absence of a majority on the nature of the charges against Petitioner is the clearest possible indicator—coming from the Supreme Court itself—that the accusation ‘is blatantly a pure invention’ and ‘a fake charge,’ to borrow from Justice Carpio. This is an institutional admission of the gravest consequence," she said.
"If the members of the majority could not even agree on the nature of the accusation reflected in the Information, such fact is an objective indicator that respondent judge could not possibly have had probable cause to issue the warrant of arrest against petitioner [De Lima]," she added.
Voting 9-6, the SC ruled against De Lima's petition to nullify the arrest warrant issued against her by Judge Juanita Guerrero of the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court branch 204 for illegal drug trading.
De Lima said that five of the nine justices who voted to dismiss her petition agreed that the crime charged against her is illegal drug trading while three other justices asserted that it is the crime of conspiracy to commit drug trading.
"If at least three members of the nine justices constituting the majority that voted against petitioner believe that the charges are for conspiracy to commit drug trading, then it only follows that they must have concluded that respondent judge issued a warrant of arrest for an entirely different, and wrong, case. To keep petitioner in continued pre-trial detention is patent abuse of judicial authority," she said.
De Lima said that Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo is confused as to whether the information charged is illegal drug trading or conspiracy to commit drug trading as he changed his mind from one to the other in a matter of four paragraphs.
“Bluntly put, in the absence of a majority to sustain the validity of the information, Petitioner is entitled to an immediate release from pre-trial detention as a matter of right,” she said.
De Lima has repeatedly denied allegations she had conspired with high-profile inmates to sell or trade illegal drugs inside the national penitentiary during her term as Justice Secretary in exchange for millions of pesos supposedly for her senatorial campaign.
The senator is currently detained at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame, Quezon City. (YJG/VoxPop Philippines)