Defense questions discrepancy in prosecution’s presentation of evidence vs. Jinggoy

The defense panel in the bail hearing of Senator Jinggoy Estrada on Tuesday questioned the prosecution's presentation of documents supposedly showing the recipients of projects funded by Estrada's pork barrel allocations.

During the hearing, defense lawyer Sabino Acut Jr. said the prosecution was not being accurate when it referred to the documents as "masterlist of beneficiaries or recipients" when it fact they were only "attendance sheets."

"These are not lists of beneficiaries. These are attendance sheets. It should be referred to as what the title on the document shows," he told justices of the Sandiganbayan Fifth Division, which is handling Estrada's plunder and graft cases.

Associate Justice Ma. Theresa Dolores Gomez Estoesta, a member of the division, also asked the prosecution why it is referring to the document as list of beneficiaries.

Acut accused the prosecution of trying to interpret the documents.

The court asked the prosecution to just read the title of the documents.

The prosecution was direct examining witness lawyer Vic Escalante, a member of the Ombudsman special panel that investigated the pork barrel scam.

Escalante was being asked to identify the documents he received while conducting the investigation.

Because of the failure of the prosecution and defense to agree on the identification of documents, the court ordered them to "sit down and finalize the stipulation."

Graft and plunder charges have been filed against Estrada for allegedly benefitting from the pork barrel scam, which involved the funneling of public funds to non-existent non-government organizations for kickbacks. —KBK, GMA News