Case unsolved: How a botched investigation spurred more injustice
The death of flight attendant Christine Dacera could have been an ordinary case of a private person who died during a New Year revelry had it not been scandalized by half-baked police investigation.
Without hesitation, the police declared the victim’s death as a rape-slay, placed three of the partygoers under police custody, and filed a provisional case of rape with homicide. The use of the word provisional is a convenient excuse that the police miserably lacked evidence to back their claims. Despite this inadequacy, no less than PNP Chief, Gen. Debold Sinas, declared that the rape-slay of Dacera is solved with the arrest and indictment of three suspects.
The PNP manual on heinous and sensational crimes considers a crime as solved if the offender has been identified, there is sufficient evidence to charge him, if the offender has been taken into custody, and the offender has been charged.
The most intriguing question is whether there really was a rape-slay. The suspects explained that there was none and maintained their innocence citing their being gay to highlight the impossibility that they raped the victim. The police countered with the argument that when gay people become drunk, this will transform them and make them capable of committing the crime. The LGBTQ+ community finds this argument funny, but the police is not relenting on its rape-slay theory.
While we respect the privacy of Christine’s grieving family and do not make any judgment as to her character, the case has become a public issue that highlights a problem in law enforcement.
The police confidence on their rape-slay theory was debunked by the inquest prosecutor’s resolution which essentially unmasked the truth that the police have no evidence to support their rape-slay theory. “No evidence medically or scientifically was presented to prove that the cause of death or the rupture of the aortic aneurism was by reason of the alleged rape. Likewise, if the homicide was committed, the person/s responsible is/are yet to be ascertained through further evidence.”
The swift declaration by the police that the rape-slay case is solved begs more questions than answers. Instead of serving justice, it has spurred injustice and has aggravated the pain of the victim’s family. Here, even the suspects become victims of injustice. Their detention, even for few days, is already an injustice especially that the circumstances confronting the police at the time of the suspects’ arrest do not indicate that a crime has been committed. The forensic evidence submitted by the police delivered the last blow to the rape-slay theory since the evidence does not show that rape has been committed.
We appeal to our police authorities for them to be the vanguards of justice. Justice is served when the real perpetrator, if ever there was one, is apprehended, tried, and punished. But to send an innocent man to jail even for a single minute for whatever motivation is a disservice to the oath they have sworn before God.