DOJ chief to Lacson: Surrender first, then justice will be served

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima on Thursday stood firm on her earlier statements that Sen. Panfilo Lacson must surrender first and the justice he is asking from the government will then be served. "Lacson's surrender must precede any favorable response that may come from the government. Surrender, under criminal law, is a mitigating circumstance that can be properly appreciated not only by the courts but by the DOJ," De Lima said in a statement. De Lima was reacting to the fugitive senator's recent pronouncement saying he would rather die than face arrest as a key suspect in the November 2000 killings of veteran publicist Salvador "Bubby" Dacer and driver Emmanuel Corbito. In a statement issued by his office early Thursday, Lacson said "I will only come out when justice is rightly served or when I’m already dead." Sensing that Lacson — though his statements — only wanted to negotiate terms for his surrender, De Lima said: "Any government concession will have to depend on Lacson's show of good faith and respect for our laws which apply to everyone, Senator and ordinary citizen alike." Lacson knows that in his status as a fugitive from justice, he is not accorded to "the privilege of laying down terms with a tenor of finality," she added. Reinvestigation not DOJ's ball Also on Thursday, Lacson urged De Lima to exercise her plenary power to order a reinvestigation of the case. "Don’t look for me. Look at the evidence. It’s right under your nose. It won’t cost you two centavos to fulfill your duty to provide justice to all concerned," Lacson said. But De Lima said Lacson's motion seeking a reinvestigation by the DOJ is pending before the Court of Appeals. The Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 18, which is handling the Dacer-Corbito double-murder case, has also denied Lacson's plea for a reinvestigation. "At this point, the DOJ cannot, on its own initiative, act on Lacson's motion for reinvestigation... The issue of reinvestigation is now a single incident pending before the two courts, the RTC and the Court of Appeals. The DOJ is without jurisdiction to preempt the decision of two courts on this matter," said De Lima. "The DOJ cannot, at this point, review what is for the courts to decide," she added. — LBG/RSJ, GMANews.TV