CLEAN HANDS DOCTRINE

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

Nearly three years ago, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada stood on the Senate floor to object vehemently to the efforts to prosecute him and two other senators in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scandal.

Jinggoy said they should not be prosecuted because almost everybody in Congress was involved. 

What his limited mind did not understand was that what he raised on the floor is a mere repetition of history. 

During the Nuremberg Trials celebrated, captured Nazi German leaders argued that they could not be held accountable for the atrocities committed in Nazi Germany the conduct of World War II. 

Using the tu quoque (literally, you too), or clean hands, argument, the first batch of German Nazi leaders, led by Hermann Goehring, raised the argument that even the Allied Forces committed the same kind of atrocities the  Nazi German forces did. 

So how could you judge us, when you did the same things we did? This was their argument. 

Raising the clean hands doctrine, the Nazi German leaders argued that the Allied prosecutors could only prosecute them, if the Allied Forces were indeed clean of similar atrocities. 

Moreover, the German Nazi leaders raised the fact that atrocities - or man's inhumanity to man - were so widespread in the last world war, making it improbable that only the first batch of German Nazi leaders would undergo the trial court. 

This is selective justice, they decried. 

Selective justice is injustice. 

A brilliant American lawyer named Robert Jackson took a leave as associate justice of the US Supreme Court and led the Allied prosecution panel that tried those Nazi German leaders - Speer, Jodl, Keitel, Papen, Kaltenbrunner, Goehring, Neurath, among others. 

The result led to the hanging of the Nazi German leaders, who were found guilty of various crimes against humanity. 

Many things had happened over the last three years.

Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla are still in jail. 

Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales is proving to be our Robert Jackson. She ignored Jinggoy's clean hands doctrine.

We can always expect new plots and subplots under the new administration. But we should not lose focus on what we have at hand. 

Please do remember that Sen. Estrada did not clear himself. He did not deny that he was part of the P10-billion pork barrel scam. 

What was said that other lawmakers are included in the scam. 

In a way, he is the snitch, which violates the basic rule among thieves: There is honor among thieves. 

But the snitch has no honor.