Laborer gets life based on 6-year-old girl’s testimony

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

A Quezon City court has sentenced to life imprisonment a laborer accused of stealing P1.2 million from a man and then killing him and his housemaid after a 6-year-old girl positively identified him as the man whom she saw strangling one of the victims.

In a 27-page decision promulgated recently, Judge Bayani Vargas of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 219 found Jaime Elpidang guilty of robbery with homicide.

Vargas also ordered Elpidang to pay the heirs of Samuel Allan Sy and his housemaid, Vilma Ciruela, a total of P320,000 and P120,000 in damages, respectively.

The judge said he based his decision on the testimony of the young girl who told the court that she saw Elpidang strangle Ciruela inside Sy’s house in May 2004. The girl said she witnessed the killing from her hiding place.

In his ruling, Vargas downplayed Elpidang’s defense that he was not the one who killed Sy and Ciruela as he pointed out that a child’s testimony is sometimes sounder than an adult’s.

“Children of sound mind are likely to be more observant of incidents which take place within their view than older persons, and their testimonies are likely more correct in detail than that of older persons,” he said in his decision.

I don't know whether the guy is innocent or not, but I sometimes wonder about the Philippine justice system where eye witness testimony carries more weight than scientific or forensic evidence.

If the guy happens to be innocent, taking the testimony of a 6 year old who could have been traumatized by the killing and may have just pointed anyone to end the trauma would condemn an innocent person for life. Who knows, the suspect could have just looked like the actual murderer. Several studies have shown that eye witnesses memories are not always reliable.

Another problem is, the Philippine justice system is so slow especially if you're poor, that it would take years to even get an appeal going.

I wish the Philippine justice system would be changed to put more weight on actual evidence like fingerprints, DNA or something and not just eye witness reports. According to the reports, the suspect strangled the victims. That means there would be DNA, skin or fingerprint marks somewhere in the house or on the victim.

This is not just because I watch CSI. These things have been around since the 1800s when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes.

The problem is sometimes the police has very poor control over the crime scene just like what happened to Nida Blanca's case. So any evidence found would have been totally useless as it's been completely contaminated.