FROM THE BARREL OF MY PEN
By Gonzalo "Jun" Policarpio


O.J. AND BILL CLINTON, REVISITED


Almost everybody in America even perhaps the whole world believes former football player, O.J. Simpson, killed his wife and her male friend despite the jury's decision to aquit him of murder. The jury composed mostly of African-Americans went along with the impact statement of the late Johnny Cochran, O.J.'s lead defense counsel, that the prosecutors failed to prove the famous African American athlete committed murder beyond reasonable doubt: evidence was tampered and lack of a murder weapon.

O.J. looked very suprised when the verdict to acquit him was announced. After his release, he promised to help in finding the killer of his wife. He failed to help and he is now in jail for another crime. Jay Leno, popular television late talkshow comedian, even advised O.J. to look at the mirror and he will find the culprit.

On another case, without former President Clinton's semen on the blue dress of his young intern, Monica Lewinsky, he would have not been convicted of perjury for saying to the world "I have no sexual relations with that woman."

Consider these two criminal cases and apply them to the controversial acquittal by the Philippine Supreme Court of the son of a former Philippine actor-senator for the heinous crimes of rape and murder and other scions of wealthy Filipino families for the same crimes. Those individuals were previously convicted by a regional trial court and the Court of Appeals.

Based on what I read and listened from the Filipino media, it took 15 years for the Supreme Court to overturn the Court of Appeals' decision to convict. According to the the Supreme Court's spokeman while explaining the decision to the media, the Court's decision to aquit Hubert Webb and the other convicts does not mean that they were innocent of the crime of murder. He said that the reason for the acquittal was that the prosecutors failed to prove the commission of the crimes of rape and murder beyond reasonable doubt: rapists' semen disappeared and only one eyewitness to the murder.

In the case of the Clinton's semen, a friend of the intern kept it and submitted it to the Ken Starr Commission, an independent counsel created to investigate Bill Clinton's wrongdoings.

The Webb family announced that they are willing to help find the real perpetrators of the rape massacre of the whole female members of the Vizconde family of Paranaque. Raising a 150 million peso reward for any information that would lead to the arrest of the real culprits would be a good gesture from the defendants's families.

If the families of those convicts acquitted by the Supreme Court truly believed that their sons were innocent of raping and murdering the wife and two daughters of Lauro Vizconde, then I must say that they should be at peace with their conscience and with God. If not, then they have raped again and murdered again the Vizconde family through a legal technicality. And the wages of such sin is eternal life in hell, if not in jail on earth.