After turning down a request for it in the past, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima is now “seriously considering" a reinvestigation of the Dacer-Corbito killings that Sen. Panfilo Lacson allegedly masterminded more than a decade ago. At a press briefing, De Lima said a reinvestigation is one of the two options she is considering to bring the high-profile case to a “genuine closure" following the decision of the Court of Appeals to sustain the dismissal of the double murder charges against Lacson and the lifting of the arrest warrants issued against him. She said the other option is appealing the CA ruling at the Supreme Court. “I’m trying to study which option would be able to bring the case to a genuine closure without a significant delay. These are the two options; there are no other remaining options," De Lima said.
De Lima said she is more inclined to conduct a reinvestigation because there was no choice but to respect the CA ruling. De Lima had once turned down Lacson’s request for a reinvestigation when his petition was still pending at the CA. The appellate court had also denied Lacson’s bid to have the case reinvestigated at the Department of Justice (DOJ). “I refused to intervene, to order a reinvestigation back then because I felt that it was not legally appropriate for me to interfere at that point. It would be futile for me to do [a reinvestigation] at that point because I want the case to go through the legal process," De Lima said Tuesday in justifying her previous decision to thumb down a reinvestigation on the case. But now that the CA has ruled in favor of Lacson, a former police officer before joining politics, De Lima said a reinvestigation is a stronger option. “I would have no basis now to direct the [National Bureau of Investigation] and other law enforcement bodies to hunt him down because the only basis of that would be the warrants of arrest. I cannot defy [the CA ruling]. I have no intention at all to defy that," she said. A reinvestigation would determine whether there is probable cause to file cases against a suspect or set of suspects in a crime. After the finding of probable cause, the DOJ then files the appropriate case or cases before the appropriate court.
Double jeopardy? De Lima said if Lacson emerges as the suspect again in the DOJ reinvestigation, the prohibition against double jeopardy would not apply yet because he was never arraigned for the double murder case. “At this point, there is no double jeopardy yet because he has not been arraigned," she said. She added that the hard part would be evaluating the testimonies of three key personalities in the case: former police officers Michael Ray Aquino, Cezar Mancao II, and Glenn Dumlao. All three were Lacson’s subordinates in the now defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF), the unit that allegedly carried out the abduction and killing of noted publicist Salvador “Bubby" Dacer and Emmanuel Corbito in 2000. Mancao had accused Lacson of masterminding the crime while Aquino and Dumlao had exonerated their former boss. De Lima said the DOJ may reassess Mancao’s testimony because the CA issued its pro-Lacson ruling on the basis that Mancao was not a credible witness. “We have to reassess. We can’t just dismiss the CA ruling on that."
Supreme Court De Lima also said she is studying whether the DOJ’s other option — appealing the CA’s March 18, 2011 ruling to the Supreme Court — can bring closure to the Dacer-Corbito case. So far, the high court can either sustain the CA ruling or reinstate the arrest warrants and murder charges against Lacson. If the high tribunal rules the latter, the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 18 may proceed with hearing the double murder charges against Lacson. “I want an option where there is certainty that the direction is final closure. We do not know that if in case the SC reverses the CA, it will be remanded to the RTC — and that’s already the trial beyond the finding of probable cause — I don’t know if we will attain closure," said De Lima. She added that if the SC rules that the Manila court can continue its hearings against Lacson, the DOJ’s case against him must be airtight. “If, for example, it will be returned to the RTC. If and when the SC makes such ruling, that’s a different matter already. It will be about guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and we have this battle of credibility among those principal players," she said, referring to Aquino, Mancao, and Dumlao.
- KBK, GMA News 
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