Umpa orders: Best effort, save cases

By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent

REGIONAL state prosecutor Jaime Umpa on Tuesday called on prosecutors here to exert their best efforts to thwart off a deluge of drug suspects from local prisons to the city streets amid revelations that the courts have so far trashed at least a 100 cases as a consequence of the January fire at the Hall of Justice.

“No drug case is ever minor. Every drug case should be taken seriously; every drug case is a major one because illegal drugs kill, and substance abuse can result in crimes and, as we have been seeing lately, even the most gruesome of murders,” Umpa said.
Umpa said he was preparing an order for the city and provincial prosecution offices to work on saving the drug cases.

“Let us not use the Hall of Justice fire as an scapegoat. It is a lousy excuse for the failure to reconstitute cases,” he said. Umpa added: “If our prosecutors need to go out of their way by going to the jails just to talk to the inmates, then, by all means, they should do it. If they need to go to the offices of our law enforcers or to the witnesses, do it. And if they need to climb Mt. Apo, I say climb it, and salvage whatever case can be saved.”

He said he was disturbed over revelations that some 100 drug cases filed before the January fire have already been dismissed due to the absence of evidence and the failure to reconstitute the cases. The other day, city police director Senior Supt. Faro Antonio Olaguera said he learned that drug cases were being dismissed at least each week.

At the Misamis Oriental provincial jail alone, jailers were left with no choice but watch at least 15 drug suspects walk out because their cases were dismissed last week, according to jail warden Dominador Tagarda in an earlier interview. City prosecutor Fidel Macauyag said the cases were trashed because of the failure to reconstitute the cases, and because the fire destroyed evidence.

Umpa said prosecutors would need to coordinate and closely work with the police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

He said the prosecution offices would also need to do an inventory of the cases and assess these so as to determine which can be salvaged.

“We cannot just bow down without putting up a fight. There has to be extra-effort and best effort on our part. Losing the cases because of the fire and because there was no effort to reconstitute them is an insult on the part of the prosecution,” Umpa said. He said there was also a need to check for available evidence with the law enforcement offices and the crime laboratory. “I’m sure there are still pieces of evidence being kept elsewhere. There are evidence not yet presented in court,” Umpa said.