DETAINED Senator Leila de Lima on Monday asked the Supreme Court to void the arrest warrant issued against her by a Muntinlupa City court in connection with the drug trafficking charges filed against her by the Justice department.
She sought the issuance of a temporary restraining order and/or a writ of preliminary injunction against Judge Juanita Guerrero of the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court Branch 204 who issued the order to arrest her.
De Lima made her plea even as President Rodrigo Duterte said Monday it would be better for her to stay behind bars than end up dead.
“I’m sure that she is safe. I think people are interested not to see her dead, but to see her in prison for what she did,” Duterte told reporters.
De Lima, who was arrested over her supposed ties to illegal drug operations, insists on her innocence.
She voluntarily surrendered to authorities over the weekend after dodging an arrest warrant but stressed it was triggered by Duterte’s “fixation of revenge” against her, which was rooted in her investigation of the Davao Death Squad when she was chairman of the Commission on Human Rights.
Meanwhile, a lawmaker and fraternity brother of De Lima on Monday challenged her to answer the allegations against her instead of undermining the credibility of the courts handling her drug-related cases.
Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali, House justice committee chairman and godfather of De Lima’s son, said De Lima should refrain from “the familiar tactic of impugning the credibility” of the Muntinlupa City Regional Trial Court.
“It is unfortunate that, again, instead of facing the drug charges against her head-on, Senator De Lima now resorts to the familiar tactic of impugning the credibility of the regional trial court that issued the warrant of arrest against her, and politicizing the issue,” Umali said.
He said De Lima was one of his sisters in the Lambda Rho Sigma sorority, the counterpart of Lambda Rho Beta fraternity of the San Beda College of Law.
De Lima told the high court that Judge Guerrero committed a grave abuse of discretion when she issued a warrant of arrest against her on Feb. 23 without first resolving her motion to quash information.
She said said the judge also violated her constitutional, legal and procedural rights because in the first place she had no jurisdiction over the case.
She said it was the Sandigabanyan anti-graft court and not a Regional Trial Court that had jurisdiction over her case, which allegedly was committed when she was justice secretary.
She also said there was no substantive basis on record in finding probable cause against her.
“Glaringly absent from the recital of facts is any allegation of actual or even implied complicity of the accused in the illegal drug trade, as it does not even allege, for instance, that the accused gave instructions to the NBP inmates to gather the money that she demanded from the illegal drug trade,” De Lima said.
“There is no allegation, much less proof from the records that would show that the criminal activities of the NBP inmates were participated in by the accused.”
De Lima said Judge Guerrero acted with undue haste and inordinate interest as she had yet to resolve her Motion to Quash that had been set to be heard on Feb. 24 given the voluminous records submitted to the latter’s court.