CITIZENS, NOT CHATTELS

( Editor's note: The shadowy figures who enforce vigilante justice should learn a lesson from a 1919 Supreme Court decision discussed in this column.  )

ACCORDING to a foreign press feature, the Thai newspaper Nation published a list of 16 people who were called "the dead and the missing" since 2001, probable victims of vigilante justice.

At my table of five regulars, the subject was law enforcement.  We were recalling the old days when police officers were armed with service revolvers, specifically Police Positive .38 caliber Colt with a chamber of six shots.

Legendary police officer

One legendary officer our table chose was Chief Eduardo Quintos who rose from patrolman to senior detective and to RP's first police brigadier general.

After a grisly robbery, in the 1960s, at the government's grain agency on Otis Street where five guards where axed to death, Chief Quintos took over the investigation.  One witness said, "One of the robbers walked with a marked limp."

Old-style sleuthing without SWAT

Sleuthing is an old but reliable term to veteran detectives.  Chief Quintos' sleuthing led him to a train station at Sta.  Mesa where he and two policemen captured the three robbers without firing a shot.  On TV, viewers saw one of the captives limping as he was led to a police jeep.

Vigilante killings

One new guest near our table started telling us about vigilante killings in Davao City.  From January to midJune, he counted 24 dead suspects.  He said he couldn't recall the number of vigilante killings since 2001.

We asked him if those killed were really drug pushers or just suspects.  His quick answer: "Pushers or suspects, it's the same to the hit squad.  Some could be political enemies.  It's hard to tell.  The hit squad and its mastermind are known only to a few shadowy city denizens."

Reading material for lawmen

The retired prosecutor noted that law enforcement is carried out in strange ways.  He asked me if I could recall the details of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Villavicencio, et al v.  Lucban, et al.

I told the group I read the original decision, about 17 pages, in the old Philippine Reports.  It's not easy to forget an official act executed with incredible ignorance by the City Mayor and Chief of Police of Manila, Constabulary officers, and lawyers from the Bureau of Labor.

Vice or people exterminator?

Mayor Justo Lucban was a moral crusader, and often talked about his campaign against the sex trade in the city, on Gardenia Street, Sampaloc district, for the "best of all reasons." He vowed to exterminate the vice!

Lucban ordered police chief Anton Hohmann and his boys to close the identified houses for women of ill repute.  Between October 11 and 25, 1918, the women were kept confined to their houses, the equivalent of today's house arrest.

Mayor/police chief deport 170 women

The mayor and police authorities quietly perfected a slamdunk plan so to speak.  They arranged with the Bureau of Labor to send/deport the women/suspects to Davao province as laborers with the use of Coast Guard cutters Corregidor and Negros, guarded by Constabulary soldiers.

About midnight of October 25, the police led by Chief Anton Hohmann "descended upon the houses, hustled some 170 inmates into patrol wagons, and placed them on board the steamers that awaited their arrival."

The women thought they were going to a police station for a midnight interrogation.  They had no time to collect their belongings.  The women were received on board the steamers by a Bureau of Labor representative and a detachment of the old PC soldiers.

170 women land in Davao

The vessels reached Davao on Oct.  29, 1918, were landed and "receipted for as laborers by Francisco Sales, provincial governor of Davao, and by Feliciano Ynigo and Rafael Castillo," presumably big Davao landowners.

The governor and Ynigo had no prior knowledge that the women were prostitutes who had been expelled from Manila by the authorities, meaning Lucban and Hohmann.

While the two vessels were "putting in to Davao" the attorney for the relatives and friends of the deportees presented an application for habeas corpus to a member of the Supreme Court.

Order by the full Court

The writ was made returnable to the full Court composed of: Chief Justice Arellano and Associate Justices Avancena, Malcolm, Moir, Johnson, Street, Torres, and Araullo.

According to Chief Justice Enrique M.  Fernando, Justice George Malcolm's opinion in Lucban still ranks, after all these years, as a landmark decision on habeas corpus.

Professor of three presidents

Justice Malcolm was the founder and first dean of the UP college of law and professor of Presidents Roxas, Laurel, and Quirino.  He served the Supreme Court from 1917 to 1934 and was co-author with Dr.  Jose P.  Laurel of books on Constitutional and Political Law.

Landmark opinion

The more eloquent portion of Malcolm's opinion: "One fact, and one fact only need be recalled ­ these 170 women were isolated from society, and then at night, without their consent and without any opportunity to consult with friends or to defend their rights, were forcibly hustled on board steamers for transportation to regions unknown … The presence of the police and the constabulary was deemed necessary and that these officers of the law chose the shades of night to cloak their secret and stealthy act."

Citizens, not chattels

Mr.  Malcolm concludes: "But one can search in vain for any law, order, or regulation, which even hints at the right of the Mayor of the City of Manila or the chief of police of that city to force citizens of the Philippine Islands ­ these women despite their being in a sense LEPERS OF SOCIETY ARE NEVERTHELESS NOT CHATTELS but Philippine citizens protected by the same constitutional guaranties as are other citizens ­ to change their domicile from Manila to another locality."

A veteran law professor who was familiar with the 1918 Lucban case that made sensational headlines when he was a senior law student told us that politics was behind the filing of the case against Mayor Lucban.  It was instigated by the mayor's opponents.  The professor said, "it was time that politicians got a scary lecture from the Court on Constitutional Law."

Primer for hit squad

The Lucban case is must reading for the hit squad in Davao City who treat suspects as chattels without rights.