SC acquits Webb et al.

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer.


MANILA, Philippines—Hubert Webb and six others were acquitted Tuesday of the grisly 1991 Vizconde massacre by the Supreme Court, which thrashed the testimony of the prosecution’s star witness Jessica Alfaro as “incredible and unbelievable.”

So, who did it? Who murdered Estrellita Vizconde and her daughters Jennifer, 7, and Carmela, 18, who was raped before being stabbed to death?

Voting 7-4, the high court acquitted Webb, Antonio Lejano, Michael Gatchalian, Hospicio Fernandez, Miguel Rodriguez, Peter Estrada and Gerardo Biong “for failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt.”

All of them have been released. Biong, a former policeman convicted of destroying the evidence at the crime scene, was freed two weeks ago after having completed his sentence.

The decision does not cover two other accused, Joey Filart and Artemio Ventura, who have remained at large.

The high court’s 38-page decision to acquit Webb et al. revolved mainly around what it said was an “incredible and unbelievable” testimony of Alfaro and the alibi presented by Webb that he was in the United States at the time of the crime, which the prosecutors had failed to disprove.

“Ultimately, Alfaro’s quality as a witness and her inconsistent, if not inherently unbelievable, testimony cannot be the positive identification that jurisprudence acknowledges as sufficient to jettison a denial and an alibi,” the tribunal said in the decision written by Associate Justice Roberto Abad.

Full story here.