THE prosecution’s decision to withdraw witnesses from Article IV was reached after a careful review of the evidence and formally explained out of respect for the Senate Impeachment Court, rather than as a retreat from a weak case.
House prosecution legal spokesperson and private prosecutor Benjamin “Jay” Tolosa Jr. maintained that the panel owed both the senator-judges and the Filipino people a clear explanation after changing the witness lineup contained in its pretrial brief.
“Very quickly, number one primary reason why there was a need for us to explain, the people deserve it. They have to know, they have to hear from us why we made this decision,” Tolosa explained.
The prosecution dropped several proposed witnesses after concluding that their accounts would repeat matters already established through authenticated videos, National Bureau of Investigation testimony and evidence on the circumstances surrounding Vice President Sara Z. Duterte’s recorded statements.
“But secondly, this is actually out of respect for the Impeachment Court itself,” Tolosa emphasized.
The original lineup created an expectation that the senator-judges would prepare for testimony from the listed witnesses, making it necessary for the prosecution to formally account for its decision to no longer call them.
“We have to remember these witnesses were listed in our pretrial brief. So there’s already expectation on the part of the Impeachment Court that we will be presenting them,” he noted.
The Senate Impeachment Court later instructed both sides that they did not need to argue extensively over witness withdrawals, while allowing the prosecution to streamline Article IV before presenting its final NBI witness.
Tolosa stressed that removing witnesses was not an arbitrary change made for convenience but the result of assessing whether their proposed testimony would still contribute anything material to the case.
“So out of respect, of course, we can assume they already started to study and prepare for the possible testimonies of these witnesses,” he explained.
“So it’s also important, paliwanag namin mabuti sa kanila why we’re now deciding not to present them anymore,” Tolosa added.
“To make it clear that this decision was not reached haphazardly or arbitrarily, but there’s a good reason for it,” he stressed.
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