Why the jury system’s time in PH may never come

 There is a proposal to adopt the jury system (JS) in the Philippines. It bobs up from time to time. I am against it but I can settle for trial with assessors, a variant used in South Africa in the recent case of Oscar Pistorius. Two assessors helped Judge Masipa. 

But, I am not sure our Supreme Court will allow its invocation today; its revised 1997 Rules of Civil Procedure is silent on it. Of course its rule-making power cannot affect substantive laws of the lawmaker but we accept that the law is what the Supreme Court  says it is. It may correct errors of lower bodies but its own become the law of the land. Its availability may be questioned today.

I invoked trial with assessors in the mid-90s, in the case of a woman, Gina Doe, who retained me by phone patch over Radio Veritas one early morning. She was in jail in Pasay for mutilation. Her boyfriend had told her in a motel where they romanced that his wife, an overseas contract worker, was coming home; party over.

The bobo (moron) napped after making love, quieting his raging hormones. He awoke, yelling in pain, feeling very much diminished. The scorned woman always had a pair of scissors, working in a modista (dressmaker’s) shop in Malate.  

I thought community sentiment would be with the poor dejected and rejected woman. Judge Aurora Recina, granted, after our initial differences, our request for assessors to assist her; however, the victim stopped showing up in court, tiring of appearing with a towel around his head (Putol [cut], the man with the towel mask). His manhood was marked as Exhibit E, in a bottle, floating in formalin. After his repeated absences, the court granted the motion of MABINI (Boyet Fernandez assisted me) dismiss on the ground of denial of an accused’s right to a speedy trial and disposition of her case.

Only two assessors would have done, as in the Pistorius case. A jury is usually composed of 12 good men and true. I don’t know if any courtroom today in the Philippines has space for a jury. Manila courts are shameful and disgraceful. No decent courtroom. Makati is better – Parañaque, more so – but the courtrooms may be too small for a 12-man jury. 

It will cost billions to reconfigure courtrooms. The money can be used instead for other purposes, like improving further the working condition of judges to attract and keep the best and the brightest among idealistic young graduates.  The system worked in my youth. Among the many CFI Judges in Manila, there was tsismis (gossip) only as to one.

In Pasig, we had the likes of Judge Cecilia Muñoz Palma. It can be made to work again. In Vigan, a courageous woman judge dismissed in December 2013 a libel case Chavit Singson had filed against Niñez Cacho-Olivares. A jury might have reflected the prevailing local power situation.

The novels of John Grisham expose the underbelly of the jury system in the US. It isn’t pretty. Recent grand jury rulings in the US absolving policemen-killers have caused disturbance. In case of unexplained or debatable death here, some case would be filed leaving it to the courts to decide, with its calmative effect. But, the jurors cleared the cops, with a contrary consequence.

There is no rush to the JS, grand and petit, in the world. Indeed, Singapore even abolished the JS in 1969. The island state is OK. If it has dilemmas, we might love to have its kind of problems. It is prosperous, clean and green, and peaceful.

Lee Kwan Yew’s concern is pleading with native Singaporeans to make babies. Our diminished young man above may not be of help.

The JS is an idea whose time has not come here and maybe never will. There is no stampede to join the JS countries, and rightly so, in my view. – Rappler.com