By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Before the year ends, the Supreme Court will implement the continuous trial system for criminal cases.
The intention is to unclog court dockets and to deliver justice to the people, because everybody is just so tired of hearing the statement “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
However, the effect just might be the opposite, “Justice denied.” Particularly to the poor.
The concept is what is common in the United States and in many other jurisdictions. Here in our beloved country, it is also not new. It was implemented during President Cory’s time when Andres Narvasa was the chief justice. But it was limited to heinous or big crimes such as murder, rape, etc.
During that time I had tried a murder case as a private prosecutor in Manila in the late ‘80s and it was very taxing. When the trial starts, hearings are held the whole day—morning and afternoon. For some of the overzealous judges, they would even extend the sessions up to 7:00 or 8:00 o’clock in the evening.
A must then is to have ample economic resources for a lawyer to undertake a respectable defense or prosecution. A thorough preparation has to be undertaken before trial starts and this needs human and economic resources. Just to make sure witnesses will appear needs an extra hand. To refresh their memory also needs more time and effort.
To assure lawyers will not go hungry and run out of ammunition in the middle of the battle, they will have to charge a lump sum for their fees upon acceptance of a case. The tingi-tingi system of charging appearance fees every hearing will not do. If the client is economically hard up, where will he get the money to pay for appearance fees of P2,000.00 (which is the lowest) for the morning session and another P2,000.00 for the afternoon trial or a total of P4,000.00 per day for how many days, continuously?
Well, as they say, if you cannot afford a private lawyer, go to the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO). But will the PAO be able to handle effectively the expected flood of criminal cases? I don’t think so. If one PAO lawyer can handle only one case everyday, then the government will have to hire a lot more PAO lawyers. Hundreds of thousands of them.
This is the downside. The good side is, courts’ dockets will certainly lighten.
The present system where ordinary clients pay their lawyers for appearance fees every trial which is most likely once a month is definitely slow as far as the wheels of justice is concerned, but it gives a client time to produce money to pay his lawyer for the next hearing.
But if the government can spend big money for lawyers, why not.
Whatever happened to that murder case of mine? It went well even if I wasn’t really being paid tons of money. It was because I was just starting on my own then as a lawyer and I was young and energetic. I was able to put up the necessary effort, the sleepless nights and other sacrifices. I even experienced being in the slums of Balic-balic (between Sampaloc and Sta. Mesa) at 6:00 a.m. to fetch a witness.
Frankly, if I got that case when I was much older, I would not have really cared. I would not have accepted it in the first place.
When I had this paper going though, I would have accepted it, no matter what, for this paper had to go on even if I would recover only from the weekend of sleepless nights on Wednesdays and then the newspaper work would start again Friday mornings.**
