Vizconde Massacre Reveals the Dangers of TRIAL BY PUBLICITY over Due Process of Law

Today is indeed the 35th anniversary of the Vizconde Massacre case. I wrote a previous article where grief was weaponized. The late Lauro Vizconde passed away sometime on February 13, 2016. It was already ten years ago when he died. It's a real pity that Hubert Webb got acquitted but the real killers got free. Grief was weaponized along the way. It was as if you believed that the wrong people were caught, the false dilemma was that you actually support criminals, and that you're not grieving with Lauro. 

The Vizconde Massacre Trial, which only started in August 1995, sometime after April 28, 1995. That was when the "star witness" Jessica Alfaro, a self-confessed former drug addict, stepped forward. People were probably either too afraid, too excited, or, in the case of the Vizcondes, they were too perplexed not to notice that Jessica's story wasn't making any sense. However, it happened anyway when Jessica stepped forward, and the crimes happened. We had the famous case when the names  Hubert Webb, Antonio Lejano II, Hospicio Fernandez, Michael Gatchalian, Miguel Rodriguez, Peter Estrada, Joey Filart, and Artemio Ventura surfaced. 

The most infamous was Hubert because his father was an actor and politician. I heard back then that Hubert was already a known troublemaker. The same may have been true for Antonio, Hospicio, Michael, Miguel, Peter, Joey, and Artemio. Amazingly, two of the suspects were never found or even tried. Who was Joey Filart? Who was Artemio Ventura? They probably fled the country, or they weren't real people, just random name drops to make a story believable. If Hubert and these other men were already notorious for being bad boys and came from wealthy families, it certainly "made sense" that these guys did the horrible crime, right? 

However, the Court of Public Opinion, or perhaps we call it the MARITES Court of Gossip, doesn't care about due process. It only cares about appeasing a bloodthirsty mob as soon as it can. However, we need to understand the meaning of due process. The Supreme Court e-Library (which sadly contains the questionable ruling of the Chiong Sisters Case, where Francisco Juan G. Larrañaga was still confirmed guilty despite proof that he was in Manila) writes this about due process:

SECTION 14.    (1) No person shall be held to answer for a criminal offense without due process of law.

(2)    In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall be presumed innocent until the contrary is proved, and shall enjoy the right to be heard by himself and counsel, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him, to have a speedy, impartial, and public trial, to meet the witnesses face to face, and to have compulsory process to secure the attendance of witnesses and the production of evidence in his behalf. However, after arraignment, trial may proceed notwithstanding the absence of the accused provided that he has been duly notified and his failure to appear is unjustifiable.

However, during that time, it can be assumed that the crowds no longer cared about due process. After all, the suspects were identified. A star witness came forward, didn't she? Yes, we've got Jessica, and she's supposedly the "key" to solving the mystery. However, the more I read the narrative, the more I find it rather hard to believe. Honestly, are you going to try to convince me that it was possible to do such a noisy crime inside BF Homes in Parañaque, where the neighbors and tight security couldn't hear it? Every last detail of Jessica's story gets unbelievable. These are the ones that baffled me the most:

1. Jessica claimed that they were on shabu when the crime happened. How can a couple of people who had just executed a crime in 1991 take the authorities four years before they were caught?
2. Driving under the influence of shabu might be just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than driving under the influence of alcohol. 
3. If Hubert and the gang were under cocaine and shabu, this would've already turned them not into sophisticated criminals but noisy hooligans you'd want to get away from, really fast.
4. The idea that Artemio used a chair to mount the hood of the Vizcondes' Nissan Sentra and loosened the electric bulb over it is already a tactical error. Just the act of moving a chair and mounting the hood of the Vizconde car creates a certain amount of noise. 
5. A convoy of vehicles is a surefire way to get caught.
6. If Carmela was indeed gang raped, it should be a loud event. So even if Carmela was successfully raped and slain, the noise would be too hard to ignore.

The more I look into these questionable events, the more I feel that the crime scene was staged indeed. However, trial by publicity doesn't care about due process or if the narration is right. All it cares about is, "As long as there's a crime and there's a suspect, as long as it's a suspect, the suspect is guilty." That's completely out of line with the right to due process. Due process requires careful investigation because it's possible that a crime happened, but the wrong people were found. Mind you, look up the case of George Stinney Jr., where he was wrongfully executed at only 14 years old! Thankfully, Hubert and his co-accused weren't wrongfully executed. I may be for the death penalty but we need to fix the due process first. 

The courtroom was also complicit in trial by publicity 

In fact, even the courtroom was already compromised. It was easy to hail retired judge, Amelita G. Tolentino as the "lone judge" who stood for "what's right". However, what's so "righteous" about a judge who actually went against her own principle of "It's the quality of the evidence that counts." principle? Hubert requested Tolentino at that time for a DNA test of the semen sample found on Carmela's body. The semen may have been staged for all we know, since actual rape is rather messy. For all we know, Carmela died rather quickly, but her body was stripped naked to make it look like a rape scene. The way Carmela, her mother Estrellita, and her younger sister Jennifer were found in one single room is a real point of confusion. Honestly, all I can do is speculate that whoever did the crime purposely arranged them in one room to confuse the authorities. 

Teodoro C. Benigno of the Philippine Star even gives this recollection that should show the dangers of trial by publicity, which I'll post a long excerpt:

I am by profession a journalist. I covered this case from the outset, pored through all the relevant documents, and covered or followed the trial with the thoroughness of a beagle. In the beginning, I believed and trusted the word of Jessica Alfaro, and I, too, wanted Hubert Webb to dangle from the nearest lamppost. Ms. Alfaro was the supposed lone eyewitness to the massacre, whose testimony and whose testimony alone convicted Hubert Webb. I would have believed her up to the very end except that her drama-laden "eyewitness testimony" fell like ten pins under a deluge of events, facts, and circumstances.

Slowly I realized Jessica Alfaro was a fake. A mountebank.

She was a robot under the thrall and command of the National Bureau of Investigation. Almost a lifetime of taking drugs and telling lies spurned and blackened her holy water immersion into telling "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." But the public did not see this. The public saw only what it wanted to believe. Jessica was a redeemer. Hubert was a crazed criminal. And what was more, he was the spoiled son of then Sen. Freddie Webb "who had all the money, who had all the connections." Yeah, those rich sons of bitches should fry in hell. I believed that too.

I slowly got out of that.

A trained journalist’s eye eventually spotted that Jessica had been relentlessly drilled by the NBI on what to say. How could she, for instance, remember what everybody involved in the crime was wearing many years after? Not just clothes, but times, places, names, infinite details having to do with shoes and sweaters. And searing, conspiratorial sentences. I can’t even remember what I wore four days ago. A drug addict with total recall? And yet the NBI babied Jessica. They treated her like royalty, police sirens shrieking in and police sirens shrieking out as she sashayed into the court of Judge Amelita Tolentino like the Queen of Sheba.

NBI operatives and sources, quoted extensively by media – which had joined the lynch mob – almost daily manufactured lies. Like Hubert Webb seen here and there in Metro Manila, like the accused fleeing into the sanctuary of the Webb residence in Tagaytay there to hide as things got hot. Almost all of the solid evidence however proved that on the night of June 30-July 1, 1991, the night of the hideous massacre, Hubert Webb was in Anaheim, California.

The US State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Naturalization Service even our own Department of Foreign Affairs gathered incontrovertible evidence that Hubert could not have massacred the Vizcondes with a carving knife that fateful evening. The scals and signatures of two secretaries of state, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright attested to the authenticity of the evidence. In their time, they were the two most prominent members of the US president’s Cabinet. And the documents they signed were worth their weight in gold.

Senator Webb was able to buy them out with his "influence and connections?" C’mon, fellas. This is gobbledegook uttered by Judge Tolentino during the witching hour.

Judge Tolentino vaguely intimated something like that in her ruling. While Hubert was in the US, he smuggled himself out, then smuggled himself back to vent his madness on the beauteous Carmelita Vizconde. He raped her wantonly and finally – sated like a sexually gratified tiger in the night – knifed her to death. This is what the prosecution wants us to believe. And we Filipinos in the mass fell for it." Our NBI and Judge Tolentino airily dismissed all this massive evidence gathered by the US government in response to a "note verbale" transmitted to it by the Philippine embassy in Washington as "piece of paper."

I don’t know if I am violating a confidence. But in the wake of this multi-layered US inquiry, then Foreign Affairs Secretary Domingo Siazon Jr. whispered to me at a diplomatic reception: "That boy (Hubert) is innocent." I had long talks with Robert Heafner, legal officer of the US Embassy. A former FBI operative, he followed Hubert’s trail in America, doggedly and tenaciously. The young Webb was in America all right and there was no way he could uncork the miracle of "bilocation." Meaning he could be in two places at the same time, in the US and at the Vizconde residence in Parañaque that night of June 30, 1991.

The public was too desperate for answers since 1991. The court failed to do its duty. Remember, there were other fall guys before Hubert and his supposed gang. The court was feeding the guilty already, as suspected narrative. Was the denial of Hubert's request a case of incompetence on Tolentino's part, or was it well-calculated malice? I couldn't be certain since we have people who believe their own lies and people who manufacture their lies, knowing they're lying. The court could've tried to appease the public and say, "We will undergo due process." Sure, the trial took time since 1995, and the verdict was handed down on January 6, 2000. Lauro felt he already had justice, only for that "justice" to go away in 2010.

The real consequence of trial by justice is this. It hurts the innocent accused and the grieving party. Honestly, we shouldn't expect Lauro to have the capacity to examine the inconsistencies in Jessica's story. After all, Lauro was a man seeking justice. However, the sad part was that to get"justice", it became "basta lang dunay ma-convicted" or "as long as someone gets convicted", instead of working to find the true murderers of the Vizconde girls. I was angry to hear that Hubert was acquitted. Back then, I had no interest in legal matters until I realized Hubert was actually innocent. I never realized that it's possible to be framed for a crime one didn't commit. 

As we remember the Vizconde Massacre today, we really need to remind ourselves that a lack of due process is actually more helpful to criminals. For all we know, whoever did the massacre may have had connections to frame someone. Jessica might have been actually the "perfect witness" and the perfect scapegoats. There's no justice for the aggrieved if the wrong people were convicted. After all, it gives a false sense of justice, which Lauro had for a long time. Lauro probably died believing that the wrong people were given acquittals. Sadly, the real perpetrators are probably still out there after 35 years, probably enjoying their lives and may have even left the Philippines.