By Philip M. Lustre Jr.
THE defense lawyer who has represented Sonny Trilanes in his court cases over the last 20 years is a volunteer lawyer, who has not billed him for the legal services given him. Lawyer Reynaldo Robles, managing partner of the Chan Robles Law Offices, has been representing him with success in many legal skirmishes in court and even outside the legal arena.
“There were other lawyers, who volunteered to help Sonny Trillanes,” Robles said. “It’s not my monopoly,” he clarified, as he pointed to former University of the Philippines Law dean Perfecto Agabin, former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay and a host of young lawyers as the among the volunteer lawyers, who helped the controversial soldier turned politician.
They helped in the discussions, clarifications, and evolution of the legal strategies, issues, and arguments, which were to be presented in court. In the end, a lead lawyer had to file the legal briefs before the court. “It was me,” Robles said.
Robles justified his voluntary action to represent Trillanes, saying “it’s community service,” or his way to give back his “blessings” as a practicing lawyer. As the lead lawyer, Robles prepared and filed before the appropriate court the legal briefs, memoranda, and motions in defense of his controversial client.
In one of his pivotal court cases, Robles successfully defended Trillanes, when the Supreme Court declared as unconstitutional the Presidential Proclamation 572, which then President Rodrigo Duterte issued on Sept. 8, 2018 to revoke the presidential amnesty earlier given to Trillanes by then President Benigno Aquino III.
The High Court, in a majority opinion penned by Associate Justice Maria Filomena D. Singh, said that an incumbent President cannot just revoke a grant of amnesty without concurrence from Congress. It cited the Bill of Rights and reaffirmed that neither the government nor any of its officials, including the President, are above the law.
The High Court ruled that the revocation of Trillanes’ amnesty long after it has become final and executory violated his constitutional right to due process. It said the PP 572 violated Trillanes’s constitutional rights against ex post facto laws and the doctrine of double jeopardy.
In hindsight, Robles said the unanimous decision by the Court of Appeals, promulgated on May 31, 2021 but issued on June 9, 2021, was enough since it upheld the presidential power to grant amnesty and stopped unilaterally Duterte from revoking Trillanes’s amnesty and bringing him back to jail. The CA decision, rendered by its 11th Special decision, was penned by Associate Justice Edwin Sorongon, with concurrence from Associate Justices Perpetua Susana Atal-Paño and Raymond Reynold Lauigan.
But the Supreme Court took a step forward by issuing a verdict that settled the constitutional issue of the presidential power to give amnesty, Robles said. “This is most important not only now but for future generations,” Robles said. Students of law would understand that not even the president could violate the Bills of Rights in the 1987 Constitution. It has been customary for the Judiciary to leave to the Supreme Court to settle the issue of constitutionality of any decision, while allowing the lower court to decide on its merits, Robles said.
Its decision
is the climax of Trillanes’s tumultuous struggle to clear himself of various
court charges. Robles, however, said he and Trillanes were still exploring the
possibility of filing countercharges against Duterte and Calida. There is no
final decision yet, he said.
Duterte issued PP572 in an attempt to jail anew Trillanes, one of his fiercest critics, since involvement in a coup d’etat is a nonbailable offense. Then Solicitor General Jose Calida was said to have authored the controversial presidential directive. Duterte offered the lame excuse that he merely signed what Calida gave him. Robles filed an urgent motion before the Supreme Court for temporary restraining order (TRO) on the implementation of PP572.
The Supreme Court ordered two Makati City Regional Trial Court judges to hear the issues of PP 572. Judge Andres Soriano of RTC 148 and Judge Elmo Alameda of RTC 150 issued conflicting decisions. Soriano dismissed PP572, arguing the amnesty granted to Trillanes is final and could not be reopened. Alameda reopened the case, but allowed Trillanes to post bail. This prompted the state prosecutors to bring Soriano’s decision to the Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals ruled in Trillanes’s favor, describing as “mental calisthenics” what Duterte did. While the CA effectively sustained Soriano’s decision not to reopen it and stopped Alameda from hearing it, Robles brought the issue to the Supreme Court to settle the constitutional issue of PP 572. The High Court put to rest the issue but not without Robles saying “the government can prosecute but not persecute its critics.”
Reynaldo Robles, 58, is a practicing lawyer with vast experience both in the private and public sectors. He took his primary and secondary education at Don Bosco Academy in Bacolor, Pampanga and Pampanga High School respectively. He took his law course at Far Eastern University (FEU) and placed 10th in the 1990 Bar Exams.
Robles served as legal counsel and advocate for private corporations and public institutions, and several elected and appointed national and local government officials. He served in various capacities in government and private sector. He served as legal counsel of the late Toots Ople, when she was secetary of the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW). Robles helped in DMW’s streamlining and reorganization from remnants of the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA), the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and the Office of Overseas Migrant Workers Affairs (OMWA) of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
He served as a board member of the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) from 2011 to 2017, a state corporation and regulatory body. He was involved in the oversight of all land reclamation projects and activities, as he was chair of the PRA board’s land reclamation committee.
He served as adviser, legal counsel, and legislative consultant to several national and local officials like Blas Ople, Trillanes, Ismael Mathay, Jr., Manny Villar and others. His legislative experience included working in technical working groups (TWG), which crafted final versions of the committee reports and committee bills of Senate and House Bills in the 16th and 17th Congress, a number of which were passed into law.
As founding partner of the law firm of Chan Robles & Associates, he has counseled numerous corporate clients and served as chief legal counsel, corporate secretary and director of over a hundred companies. With partner, the late Joselito Chan, he cofounded the Chan Robles Virtual Law Library in 1996, an Internet-based library which has remained as one of the most popular legal research portal. Robles teaches law subjects in law schools, including FEU.
Robles was instrumental in the preparation of the first and second information, which Trillanes and Magdalo associate Gary Alejano have filed in 2017 before the International Criminal Court (ICC). The two pieces of information alleged that Duterte and his cohorts committed crimes against humanity in their bloody but failed war on drugs launched in 2016 when Duterte became president. While their legislative lawyers worked on the two information, Robles was instrumental in their drafting, as he one of the lawyers, who gave advice and direction in the case buildup against Duterte and ilk. The late Jude Josue Sabio filed the first information under his name, but it was done to give cover to the guys, who although they worked feverishly on the completion of the two pieces of information, could be subject to harassment.
The first information submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor, had claimed that Duterte, as mayor of Davao City, and, later, as president, was engaged in the mass murder of people suspected to have been involved in the use and trade of prohibited drugs. It claimed that, for the interest of international criminal justice, the ICC, through its Office of the Prosecutor, should proceed to conduct a preliminary investigation on the reported mass murder on the basis of the facts laid down by the information and details given by the international human rights groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It raised the possibility to bring the issue to the next step after preliminary investigation, which is the formal investigation by the ICC.
The first information prepared by the Magdalo and their legislative staffs and reviewed by Robles has two major divisions: the first part described the rise of Duterte and his DDS, when he was mayor of Davao City; the second part covered the use of the Davao City-made DDS template on the national level. The first information sufficiently covered the period 1988 to 2016, when the DDS came into prominence, as Duterte used his liquidation squads to kill criminal elements and political rivals in the southern port city. But it lacked the desired details, specifically when Duterte became president and adopted the Davao City template on a national scale.
Hence, Trillanes and Alejano worked on the second information, which is to complement and bolster the first information. They personally submitted it to the ICC headquarters in The Hague. This time, Sabio was no longer involved, but Robles gave valuable legal advice because it involved criminal law as it contained specific cases of murder by police officers and vigilante forces. #
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