This columnist could not help wondering why despite the bossman of the prosecuting arm of the government repeating ad nauseam for several weeks that the Degamo slay had been solved with the arrest or surrender of the perpetrators capped by their sworn confessions, that police raids authorized by the court yielded alleged incriminating evidence and other circumstantial and “solid” evidence all pointing to Congressman Arnolfo Teves Jr. as the brains behind the killing, the government entity tasked to prosecute the suspects could not immediately file the criminal complaint against the named lawmaker.
While it was evident that somebody was using the news agencies to trumpet the certain filing of the criminal case and sucking every juice it could squeeze from it for personal media mileage, the length of time it was taking to institute the case birthed the suspicion that something was holding the law enforcers from instituting it to determine the existence of probable cause.
Finally the cat is out of the bag. The previous days witnessed the rapid succession of eleven suspects, after getting lawyers of their choice, recanting their original sworn statements confessing to the crime, citing their being subjected to intimidation and torture by the police that forced them to admit to their participation.
Apparently, the government body had only the confessions of the suspects to sustain a formal indictment and they could have been probably unsure of their case should the affiants reverse themselves, hence they were sleuthing for other testimonial and documentary evidence to back up its premature and pompous claim that it was 100-percent sure that the case was solved and that Teves and “other masterminds” were behind the multiple murders.
People cannot help entertaining the thought that DoJ’s self-aggrandizing and supercilious pre-judgmental conclusion on the guilt of Teves had to be validated by fabricated evidence because it had placed the cart ahead of the horse, hence the predicates must be tailored to the conclusion. That is one way of looking at the suspects recanting their sworn statements.
If their claim is true that they were intimidated and coerced into admitting to the crime they had not committed, then there is logic in saying that they were precisely tortured so that their perjured confession and their pointing to others as their accomplices would tailor the narrative that Teves masterminded the murders.
What the authors of this nebulous theory had not anticipated was the 180-degree turnaround of the suspects that threw a monkey wrench into what they thought would be a walk in the park in prosecuting Teves. They may have gotten wind of the impending somersault of the suspects and put on hold the filing of the case while they scoured and searched for the much-needed proof to nail them.
The pressure, however, to finally institute the case weighed down heavily, and since evidently they could no longer justify the extreme delay in the formal filing of the charge sheet, and there had been the unstoppable recantations of suspects, the embarrassed government official put on a brave face and with all the pretended braggadocio declared that the case against all the suspects will be filed on the basis of the recanted sworn statements. What!!!??? Listen to this, they will also simultaneously charge them with perjury!!! What!!!??? Either this is an attempt at clowning or it’s sheer idiocy. Take your pick.
(To be continued)