On Target
By: Ramon Tulfo

"On Target " comes out every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in Philippine Daily Inquirer's Metro Section.

Sample Column:

Alibi a very weak defense
Published: November 4, 2004
Inquirer - Metro Section

SEN. Alfredo Lim says the Manila police got the wrong suspect in the killing of the Western Police Department’s Senior Supt. Manolo Martinez.

According to the police general-turned politician, suspect Jun Felizardo was a fall guy.

Felizardo was in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan when Martinez was shot dead in front of the Sta. Mesa police station, Lim added.

Police said they picked up Felizardo based on the testimony of two witnesses.

They said Felizardo was at the scene of the crime.

But the former Manila police chief said that a human rights lawyer, Rey Bagatsing, and a retired police official discovered that Felizardo and his wife were in Bulacan at the time Martinez was killed.

I have no quarrel with Senator Lim on whether Felizardo is guilty or innocent.

Lim, a lawyer, should know that an alibi is a very weak defense.

In law, an alibi is a plea that a person charged with an offense was in another place at the time it was committed.

Considering that San Jose del Monte, Bulacan is near Manila, the suspect could have taken part in Martinez’s assassination, and then could have proceeded to Bulacan after the crime.

The judge who will try the case will have that kind of mindset.

I am not saying Felizardo is guilty.

I am only saying that Bulacan’s proximity to Manila all the more makes Felizardo’s alibi a weak defense.

If the judge in the Vizconde multiple murder case did not buy the alibi of suspect Hubert Webb in the country’s “crime of the century,” much more so will the judge take Felizardo’s alibi.

Hubert, son of former Sen. Freddie Webb, was supposed to be in the United States when the Vizcondes were being butchered at BF Homes, Parañaque.

Even US officials testified that the young Webb was in the US at the time of the grisly murders.

I brought up the case of Hubert Webb because Lim, who was director of the National Bureau of Investigation at the time of the Vizconde killings, said the boy was innocent.

By the way, why is it taking the Supreme Court so long to decide on the appeal of Webb et al.?

* * *

A father’s cry for justice for the death of his two sons two years ago has somehow been heard.

The Bureau of Fire Protection, after sitting on the case for two years, has taken cognizance of Eric Cochingyan’s case against the owners of the Li Seng Giap Building in Binondo, Manila.

Cochingyan’s two sons were killed when the building was razed.

The building was a fire trap according to Cochingyan.

He should know. Cochingyan had resided there with his two sons before tragedy struck.

BFP chief Francisco Senot told Cochingyan the bureau’s legal department is thinking of filing criminal charges against the building owners.

For reasons only they knew, Senot’s predecessors virtually sat on Cochingyan’s complaint.

Baka nalagyan sila.