Seeking Justice

Saturday, 18 December 2010 03:33

Written by Neric Acosta

The week was dominated yet again by what has been long lodged in the public consciousness for close to two decades: the 1991 Vizconde massacre and the wrenching saga of a much-celebrated case, a cause célèbre like no other in recent memory. The case had all the elements of a crime novel and more: a gruesome, macabre murder of a mother and two daughters, a son of a powerful politician and his band of friends tagged as prime suspects, the recollection of sensational vignettes of cold-blooded acts of rape and multiple stabbings, cover-up and the destroying of evidence, a grieving father and husband returning from work abroad to bury his family.

The public at large was riveted to the running reality TV. Then after more than four years after the crime, a verdict by a lower court convicted Hubert Webb and six other young men in 1995 to life imprisonment. Webb cried foul, asserting his innocence by presenting an alibi – and 400 documents as evidence - that he was in the United States at the time of the crime.

But media had covered the long-running saga with such attention to gore and the malevolence of the crime, highlighting the class divide and disparate reading or perceptions of justice. To the vast underclass this was a case of the rich and powerful exercising inordinate clout and control over the justice system. Seeing scions of rich families being tried for rape and murder provided national schadenfreude, the better to assuage the long-held view that there is a sharp, immutable societal chasm between de facto ‘justice for the rich’ and ‘justice for the poor.’

All this has returned to the fore in this week’s acquittal of Webb and company by the Supreme Court. To those who may have perceived the innocence, or at the least the presence of reasonable doubt on the guilt of the convicted, their 15 years of incarceration at the National Penitentiary is seen as a grave miscarriage of justice. But to Lauro Vizconde, who has had the unimaginable pain of losing his loved ones in an unspeakable massacre, the acquittal is, as he describes it, “a second death, a reliving of great agony” – and the dreadful affirmation yet again of the inherent injustice of a system that favors the privileged and powerful and pins down the poor.

The overarching question in all this is simply yet ultimately, “has justice, all told, been served?” Or will this decision provide closure to a case that in large measure drove the legislature in 1992 to restore the death penalty. The media frenzy that covered the acquittal of Hubert Webb and six others beclouded public appreciation of the Supreme Court’s decision. The intense focus was on the deeply human side of pain and anguish (Vizconde’s) and relief and joy (Webb’s and his family). What seemed to have been conveyed by media’s coverage was that Webb and company were absolved and exonerated, while Lauro Vizconde was mercilessly skewered yet again.

This is, clearly, a reduced and inaccurate reading of the events this week. Seven of the 15 justices voted to acquit on the basis of reasonable doubt on the guilt of Webb, and considering four dissenting opinions and four abstentions, did not determine that he and the other six are innocent of the crime committed. In a criminal justice system, establishing even an iota of reasonable doubt warrants acquittal. If a guilty verdict by lower courts is anchored largely on the testimony of a witness who pointed to Webb and company, and doubt on the testimony’s veracity or witness’ credibility is determined by the higher court, an earlier conviction has grounds for reversal – but not necessarily for any categorical declaration of innocence.

Many are left to wonder about what this will all mean to the future of a criminal justice system. For a case that has gripped the public imagination for so long, has social trust been strengthened here or corroded? How will an institution like the Supreme Court be seen by the ordinary citizen: a coddler of the well-connected, or a bulwark still of the principle of ‘justice for all’? Perhaps justice may never really be served in any absolute sense. Lauro Vizconde is now frail and ailing, Hubert Webb is now visibly middle-aged, and people will hold on to their ossified beliefs one way or another about the guilt or innocence of the accused or convicted.

There may have been for the different parties involved the paroxysms of injustice and redemption, of anguish and catharsis, of pain and relief, in the last two decades since that ill-fated night in July 1991. And for this, all who have been witness to the saga may have been diminished by the experience. Seeking healing and granting forgiveness will surely be the much harder struggle.

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