The Supreme Court has permitted courts in Davao City to kick off on September 2 the conduct of trials and hearings on high-profile criminal cases through video conferencing, a new procedure that would enable detained persons to testify and be cross-examined inside their detention cells.
Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta, chairman of the SC’s committee on revision of rules, said hearings and trials via video conferencing will apply to pending and newly filed high-profile criminal cases.
Considered high-profile cases are those involving violations of the Human Security Act such as terrorism, crimes against humanity, and those whose detained suspects are considered “high-value targets” because of the threats they may pose to the security of the jail facilities, the court, and the community.
The SC said that detained persons who are seriously ill or those diagnosed with serious or grave medical conditions or with highly contagious disease or those detained in national penitentiaries may also be heard through video conferencing.
Court Administrator Jose Midas Marquez said that there are about 4,000 detainees in three Davao City jails that are managed by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology where hundreds of Maute, Abu Sayaff and New People’s Army (NPA) members are detained in these jail facilities.
The system on video conferencing will be tested for not more than two years between the Davao City Hall of Justice and the Davao City jails.
Marquez said that video conferencing is “the holding of a conference among people at remote locations by means of transmitted audio and video signals and where individuals meet one another in a real-time virtual manner ‘as if they were in the same room’ without the hassle and expense of traveling.”
The guidelines for video conferencing have been approved by the SC as a full court on recommendations made by Peralta,
The SC said the guidelines “aim to guarantee and preserve the constitutional rights of the accused in court proceedings who are persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) being detained in a district, city or provincial jail or a national inmate committed in a national penitentiary.”
According to the tribunal, the use of the system is designed “to eliminate the safety, security and health risks posed by the personal appearance of PDLs who are ‘considered to be high-risk or afflicted with highly contagious diseases.”
“Such risk is not only posed on the accused but also to judges, court personnel, and the public in general. This will also guarantee the accused’s rights to be present and confront witnesses against them and to ensure the continuity of proceedings in criminal cases,” the high court said.
Justice Peralta and Court Administrator Marquez have conducted the training seminars for Davao City judges, prosecutors, lawyers from the Public Attorneys Office and jail wardens from the Davao City District Jail.
Actual demonstrations were held in the courtroom of Davao City regional trial court (RTC) Judge Emmanuel Carpio.
Peralta and Marquez said the courtroom and the hearing room were equipped with television monitors, speakers, and high definition cameras, and linked by radiofrequency through the towers put up in the Hall of Justice and the Davao City Jail.
Three courtrooms have been equipped with the needed facilities for video conferencing, Marquez said.
“We had to grapple with the constitutional requirement that gives the PDL (person deprived of liberty) the ‘right to meet witnesses face to face,’” Peralta said.
“The phrase ‘face to face’ first appeared in the Philippine Bill of 1902 and was merely copied in our 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions. Back in 1902, in 1935, and perhaps even in 1973, the technology we have today was unheard of,” Peralta explained.
Marquez, for his part, the “face to face” formula was borrowed from the United States experience but was not used in the 6th Amendment of the US Constitution.
It actually pre-dates the US Constitution and can be found in the Declaration of Rights of Individual States which later found its way to US jurisprudence, he said.
“But even US jurisprudence teaches us that the Confrontation Clause does not require face to face confrontation of the witness in the same room and has considered the remote testimony of a witness via CCTV as having preserved all the characteristics of in-court testimony,” Marquez added.
Justice Peralta urged Davao City judges, prosecutors, public defenders, private lawyers and jail wardens to support this video conferencing project as “this procedure is a breakthrough in trials in criminal cases and trailblazing because it can, later on, be applied in civil cases and benefit our thousands of overseas Filipino workers who need not go back home to physically testify in our courts but instead appear remotely from our embassies and consulates.”