Much was said and insinuated about how Fiscal Resado could have been bribed out of filing the case. For his part, Resado also got some primetime airtime to explain the legal and factual infirmities that led him to dismiss the case because it wouldn't stand trial anyway. After everything, I think most everyone is missing the point. And it is one which, when pursued and answered, would render everything else--related controversies, accessory accusations and ancillary questions--moot and academic.
The only real and important issue here is this: "Whether or not, in acting as he did, Fiscal Resado fulfilled his mandate in his capacity as a state prosecutor representing the Republic of the Philippines." In short, did he do his job?
The Philippine justice system may not be perfect, but it is so engineered to ensure that all parties get access to the courts and the higher interest of justice is ultimately served. In this scheme of things, the state prosecutors, who are under the Department of Justice, play an instrumental role. They are the ones that set the wheels of justice in motion. And when the judicial mechanism starts to grind, as when the case has been successfully filed before the court, the prosecutors' job continues. They represent the state throughout the litigation and work to ensure that the interest of the state and the general public is upheld via a conviction.
This peculiar role is of utmost importance in criminal cases. In every crime, the party in interest (the party who stands to be benefited or injured by the results of the case) is necessarily the state, which is why every criminal case is prosecuted in the name of the People of the Philippines. This is so because every crime is deemed to be an affront to the state and a violation of public order. The interest of the state is in fact bigger than that of the private party who was actually injured. In a criminal litigation, the injured party is reduced to being a witness for the prosecution, such that a criminal case can go on in his absence and a conviction can be had if other substantial evidence warrants the same. In criminal cases, every conviction is a victory of the state.
It is thus easy to see which side of the scale state prosecutors should be in. And it becomes more apparent why, in deciding which cases should be filed on behalf of the state, state prosecutors are only required to ascertain "probable cause" and not "guilt beyond reasonable doubt," which properly pertains to the courts.
"Probable cause" is nothing more than a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime. The test of probable cause is whether or not, on the strength of the personal knowledge of the complainant or officer of the facts and circumstances, there exists grounds sufficient for a reasonably prudent man to believe that the person has committed an offense and should be brought to trial.
On the other hand, "guilt beyond reasonable doubt" is the highest level of proof, and the onus probandi required in criminal cases to secure a conviction. As such, more than mere personal knowledge, it is a highly a matter of evidence.
A team of drug enforcement experts, in the exercise of their official duties, were able to apprehend a group allegedly in the act of committing the high crime of selling dangerous drugs. Now, somebody tell me which part of the definition of "probable cause" the prosecutors handling the curious case of the Alabang Boys did not understand.
There may, or they may not have been irregularities in the gathering of evidence, but these are best left to the courts to rule on, based on the quantum of evidence that the law requires them to employ. Last time I checked, public officers in this jurisdiction still enjoy the legal presumption of regularity (i.e., public officers in their exercise of their official functions are presumed to have performed their duties regularly). Pieces of evidence to the contrary are rightly for judges and justices to examine in the light of this presumption, and not for the state's lawyers to use to defeat the avowed public purpose of: "safeguard[ing] the integrity of its territory and well-being of its citizenry, particularly the youth, from the harmful effects of dangerous drugs on their physical and mental well-being, and to defend the same against acts or omissions detrimental to their development and preservation," giving rise to the need "to enhance further the efficacy of the law against dangerous drugs, it being one of today's more serious social ills." (Section 2, RA 9165)
I have been trying not to end this in a spiritual tone. But I find that when you're fed up and resigned to the fact that in this part of the world, people can do the worst things and get away with it--over and over again--you find yourself turning to God. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many Senate hearings you survive or how many times you're vindicated in your lifetime. What matters is how God will judge you by nothing more than your conscience when your time is up.
I can almost hear Him say:
