It’s final: Supreme Court stands by decision allowing Mary Jane Veloso to testify vs. recruiters

The Supreme Court (SC) has stood by its decision allowing Filipina death row inmate Mary Jane Veloso to testify against her alleged recruiters while she is imprisoned in Indonesia.

The Third Division "denied with finality" a motion by Maria Cristina Sergio and Julius Lacanilao which asked the court to reconsider its October 2019 decision allowing Veloso to testify by way of deposition through written interrogatories.

In a March 4, 2020 resolution made public Friday, the SC said the motion for reconsideration raised no substantial argument other than issues that were already "duly considered and passed upon" by the court.

The SC also denied Sergio and Lacanilao's motion to set the case for oral arguments.

"No further pleadings, motions, letters or other communications shall be entertained in this case. Let an entry of judgment be issued immediately," the court said.

Lawyers for the Veloso family said this decision means the Nueva Ecija court hearing the charges against Sergio and Lacanilao can now schedule the taking of Veloso's testimony.

The highest Philippine court had ruled last October that barring Veloso from testifying will violate her right to due process.

The SC decision reinstated a trial court's ruling -- which had been reversed by the Court of Appeals -- allowing the taking of Veloso's testimony.

Veloso was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to execution by firing squad in Indonesia over 2.6 kilograms of heroin found in her luggage at Yogyakarta airport in 2010.

The Filipina said she was tricked by her recruiters into smuggling illegal drugs into Indonesia.

She was spared from execution in 2015, after Sergio, her alleged recruiter, surrendered to authorities. Then-president Benigno Aquino III had proposed to Jakarta that Veloso be turned into a witness.

Sergio and Lacanilao were convicted of large-scale illegal recruitment in a case involving three other women last January.

"In time, not only will the illegal recruiters be held to account but her innocence will eventually be judicially established and we look forward to her coming home free as a logical consequence," said the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers.

"Let Mary Jane speak out now and bring her home in time. It is a long and torturous journey but we will get there," they said. — RSJ, GMA News