PROSECUTORS are ready to cross-examine Col. Raymund Dante Lachica if the impeachment court or Vice President Sara Duterte’s defense calls him, private prosecutor Benjamin “Jay” Tolosa Jr. said Tuesday, defending the decision to leave him off the panel’s own witness presentation.
“We will welcome it and we will cross-examine him,” Tolosa said at the prosecution’s noontime briefing.
He said the team had weighed what Lachica could add against the risks of presenting a potentially adverse witness. Its first question was whether his testimony was still needed to establish a point that other evidence had not covered.
“We don’t see the necessity,” Tolosa said.
The prosecution had already confirmed that it would not present Lachica and Col. Dennis Nolasco as its witnesses. Lead prosecutor Rep. Gerville Luistro told the court Monday that the panel considered the testimony already presented sufficient to establish its confidential fund allegations.
Tolosa said Tuesday’s decision to forgo additional witnesses followed that same assessment. The team applied the test to its witness list generally, he said, rather than only to the two security officers.
“Kailangan pa ba to meet our evidentiary targets or not?” he said, describing the question prosecutors asked themselves.
He also explained why the identity of the party calling a witness matters to the prosecution’s strategy. A witness presented by prosecutors would then face questioning from the defense, which could seek answers favorable to Duterte.
“We don’t think that any potential gain will outweigh the inherent risks that are present when you call a hostile witness,” Tolosa explained.
He stressed that discussing those risks did not mean prosecutors were certain Lachica would lie. It was a general consideration when deciding whether to call someone whose own actions might also come under examination.
House prosecutor Rep. Jonathan Keith Flores said the existing evidence already covered the matters the team wanted to establish, including recorded expenditures described as payments for safehouses, medicines and rewards.
“We’ve already established what we wanted to establish,” Flores said.
He argued that further testimony from Lachica was unnecessary for the prosecution’s planned presentation on those points. The spending descriptions he discussed were part of the fund records under examination.
Tolosa said the court’s request to keep Article I open preserved a different option: senator-judges could- in the future – decide, after hearing both sides, if they still wanted testimony from Lachica.
metrosundaily
