Be wary of witnesses in a hurry

By Atty. Eduardo T. Reyes III

In today’s world where honesty and truth are in short supply, the sordid reality does not spare even the courts.

Untruths, half-truths, or distorted truths are offered as versions of events which skew the truth and mislead the courts.

Yet it is worse when the truth is not only tinkered with once, but twice or many times over.

Jurisprudence has congealed a policy to look with disdain at testimonies that are changed or calibrated to suit one’s case theory. And when the testimony was already adduced in court, and the witness seeks to withdraw it, or otherwise known as “desistance” or “recantation”, it makes it even more objectionable.

There is a surfeit of case law on why affidavits of desistance or recantation are considered as unreliable. Thus:

“It is settled that an affidavit of desistance made by a witness, including the private complainant, after conviction of the accused is not reliable and deserves scant attention. The rationale for the rule is obvious: affidavits of  retraction can easily be secured from a witness, usually through intimidation or for money consideration”. (Ricky Portugalete v. People of the Philippines, G.R. No. 243543. April 10, 2019).

“Affidavits of desistance that were executed after judgments of conviction had been promulgated by trial courts are generally received with extensive caution. Arlene’s Affidavit of Desistance provides that she filed the Complaint due to a misunderstanding, which both she and Prudencio had agreed to reconcile. This Affidavit of Desistance cannot prove the nonexistence of all the elements of bigamy. Moreover, the Affidavit of Desistance was executed 13 months after the accused’s conviction in the trial court. As the Court of Appeals held, an afterthought merits no probative value.  In People v. Dela Cerna:

An affidavit of desistance is a sworn statement, executed by a complainant in a criminal or administrative case, that he or she is discontinuing or disavowing the action filed upon his or her complaint for whatever reason he or she may cite. A survey of our jurisprudence reveals that the court attaches no persuasive value to a desistance, especially when executed as an afterthought. (Prudencio De Guzman y Jamaquio v. People of the Philippines, G.R. No. 224742. August 7, 2019). 

In the recent case of Rolando Galindez, Daniel Liberato and all persons claiming rights under them v. Felomina Torres Salamanca-Guzman, Heirs of Flora Medriano Villasista herein represented by their Attorney-in-Fact Herminio “Herman” Medriano, Erlinda M. Cariño, Vito M. Roldan, and Alejandro Collado (G.R. No. 231508) which came down on September 28, 2022 but was uploaded on the Supreme Court website only on 19 January 2023, it was concluded that “recantations” are “viewed with suspicion and reservation”. Thus:

“This Court has viewed recantations with suspicion and reservation. Affidavits of retraction can easily be secured from witnesses, usually through intimidation or for a monetary consideration. Recanted testimony is exceedingly unreliable. There is always the probability that it will later be repudiated. Only when there exist special circumstances in the case which when coupled with the retraction raise doubts as to the truth of the testimony or statement given, can retractions be considered and upheld”.

In the legal arena therefore where truth is the end-all and be-all, filtering out the lies to ferret out the truth is a mission that must be accomplished.

Yes, there could be times when the truth can be difficult to handle as Jack Nicholson had exclaimed while on the witness stand floundering under the rigorous cross-examination by Tom Cruise in the movie A Few Good Men.

But legal trials, just like trials in real life, cannot be survived on foundations of lies, untruths or half-truths.

(The author is the senior partner of ET Reyes III & Associates– a law firm based in Iloilo City. He is a litigation attorney, a law professor and a law book author. His website is etriiilaw.com).