By JOSEPH G. LARIOSA

(© 2011 Journal Group Link International)

C HICAGO (jGLi) – What is good for a gander is also good for another gander. This was the strategy taken by former Philippine police officer Michael Ray Aquino. But it came a bit too late in the day.

In a belated effort to salvage his losing effort to gain his freedom, Mr. Aquino filed on April 29, 2011, a motion for leave to submit an attachment four days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit en banc denied his motion for rehearing of his habeas corpus.

In his addendum for his petition for rehearing, the former colonel in the Philippine National Police said he “inadvertently failed to attach copies of the decision of the (case issued last Feb. 3, 2011) for which a rehearing is sought.”

He is referring to the decision rendered by the Court of Appeals of the Philippines on the case of Panfilo M. Lacson, Petitioner v. Regional Trial Court of Manila and the Dacer siblings that “nullified and set aside” the warrant of arrest and double murder case against the former Philippine police chief turned senator.

In his motion, Aquino said when he earlier cited the Lacson case, using an “electronic source (link),” it was an “unofficial link, for courts of the Philippines, other than the Supreme Court, (that) have not yet started publishing their decisions electronically.”

He said in order to “prove the authenticity of the decision found in the cited link,” his wife would be mailing “a certified copy (80 pages) of said decision” to the Third Circuit.

Joey Osit of Poblador Bautista & Reyes Law Office in Makati City in the Philippines sought and obtained a copy of the decision from the Court of Appeals in Manila on behalf of Aquino, who forwarded it to the Third Circuit.

In a one-page notice issued by the Clerk of Court, Marcia M. Waldron last Tuesday (May 17), it said on the “motion by appellant for leave to submit an attachment to petition for rehearing, no action will be taken on the foregoing motion in light of the Court’s order entered April 25, 2011, denying the petition for rehearing.”

AQUINO’S LAST OPTION: U.S. SUPREME COURT

T his decision leaves Aquino his last option to file a petition for a writ of certiorari before the United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. within 90 calendar days from the denial of his petition of his rehearing last April 25.

If Aquino is able to answer the $120-million civil suit pending before the Northern District Court of California in San Francisco, where he is one of the defendants or if there are no other pending cases involving him in other courts, he should be well on his way to his extradition to the Philippines after July.

Using the interviews he granted to ABS-CBN’s Ted Failon and GMA 7’s Mark Pulido where Cezar O. Mancao II revealed in 2008 that “he received several offers” to relocate his family, financial support and to be reinstated to the police force from the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration’s ISAFP Chief Brig. Gen. Romeo Prestoza “in exchange for implicating” Lacson in the “Dacer-Corbito” double murder case, Lacson told the Court of Appeals  that Mancao’s credibility was put into question when Mancao executed an affidavit in 2009, implicating him in the murders.

MANCAO AHEAD OF AQUINO BUT JUNIOR IN POSITION

L acson also questioned Mancao’s inconsistency when Mancao claimed that at the time that Mancao heard Lacson's  suggestion on board a car to Aquino to kill former Col. Reynaldo Berroya and Salvador “Bubby” Dacer “dahil na-ii-rita na si Bigote” (“Bigote, who is believed to be former President Joseph Estrada, is irritated with Dacer), it would have been “September or early October (2000), when then President (Estrada) was out of the country.”

Lacson claimed that this incident did not happen because when Estrada was out of the country, Lacson was also out of the country with Estrada.

Lacson also questioned the way Mancao described how he was seated in the car when he heard Lacson issued the kill order to Berroya and Dacer. Lacson’s lawyers said this seating arrangement is some kind of a violation of unwritten "protocol" among graduates of Philippine Military Academy, which dictates that a “more serious officer should sit at the back while a junior officer should sit in front.”

While Mancao agrees that it is “(u)sually (the case) but in some circumstances it is not always done.”

However, it was not pointed out during Mancao’s cross-examination that while Mancao graduated two years ahead of Aquino from the PMA, Aquino had been working with the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission headed by Lacson in 1993.

Mancao would later join Aquino in 1997 under “Special Project Alpha” headed by Lacson.

When both of them were at the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) formed by President Estrada, Aquino was Chief of Operations Division, which makes Aquino’s position higher than Mancao, who was Chief of Task Force Luzon of PAOCTF.

Aquino's long association with Lacson and Aquino's more senior position than Mancao's could be reason enough for Aquino to be seated with Lacson at the back of the car while Mancao was seated in  front. # # #

Editor’s Note: To contact the author, please e-mail him at: (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)