Maguindanao massacre trial reset for 2nd time this week

A Quezon City court cut short Thursday's hearing of the Maguidanao massacre case after a prosecution witness failed to prove his credibility to testify. Elmer Piedad, a ballistics expert from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), took the witness stand at the start of Thursday's hearing at the Quezon City Hall of Justice around 9 a.m. He, however, told the court that he failed to bring a copy of his resumè and other documents to prove his expertise in ballistics examination. He said the prosecution only informed him Wednesday afternoon that he was to testify the next morning. In response, Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Regional Trial Court Branch 221 in Quezon City suspended the afternoon session of the hearing and gave Piedad one more week to prepare his resumè and other necessary documents. Defense lawyers stressed that they need to see those documents to be convinced that Piedad is the right person to discuss ballistics reports on the remains of the massacre victims. This was the second consecutive time this week that the proceedings for the high-profile case had been reset due to problems regarding prosecution witnesses. Last Wednesday, Judge Reyes suspended the hearing because another prosecution witness, Chief Inspector Raymond Cabling, was down with the flu and could not attend the hearing. Cabling was among the seven medico-legal experts sent to Maguindanao last November 2009 to conduct an autopsy on the 57 massacre victims, 32 of them journalists. Last week, two scheduled hearings were deferred because court employees had to attend conferences outside Metro Manila. — LBG/KBK, GMA News