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by DEAN TONY LA VIÑA, RAPPLER.com
February 3, 2012

This week, from a legal point of view, the impeachment trial has come to a crucial moment. In Thursday’s session (February 2) of the impeachment court, some senator-judges raised the question of whether a mis- or non-declaration of assets by Chief Justice Renato Corona in his Statement of Assets and Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN) — by mistake or negligence, or even if willful — rises up to the level of an impeachable offense.

With the assistance of UP Law student Danielle Mae Navarro, a member of the all-student research team that supports me in my legal work on impeachment issues, I wrote and now share these reflections.

The 1987 Constitution declares in Article XI, Section 17 that “a public officer or employee shall, upon assumption of office and as often thereafter as may be required by law, submit a declaration under oath of his assets, liabilities, and net worth (Emphasis supplied)” and this mandate can be considered as being implemented by RA 6713 “Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees” and RA 3019 “Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. ”

Under RA 6713, all public officials shall file under oath their SALNs and those of their spouses and unmarried children under 18 years of age. Moreover, RA 3019 explicitly requires that “every public officer… shall prepare and file… a true detailed and sworn statement of assets and liabilities, including a statement of the amounts and sources of his income, the amounts of his personal and expenses and the amount of income taxes paid for the next preceding calendar year.”

Thus, these laws contemplate both the public officer’s physical act of filing his and his family’s statement of assets, liabilities and net worth and his filing of a true, genuine and accurate SALN.

The prosecution does not necessarily need prove ill-gotten or hidden wealth to convict the Chief Justice under Article 2 of the impeachment articles. In fact, as I have argued elsewhere, it is a mistake for the prosecution to proceed with such a theory of law which tends to criminalize the impeachment proceedings, raising the bar of the applicable rules of evidence and the standard of proof required for conviction.

In my view, this is a flawed strategy that must be quickly abandoned. Indeed, this criminalization of impeachment approach, a product of the prosecution, has now led many senator-judges to assert that impeachable offenses must rise up to the level of high crimes.

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