In a letter sent to the Judicial and Bar Council today, 18 September 2024, human rights alliance KARAPATAN expressed its “vehement opposition” to the reapplications of two regional trial court judges for higher positions in the judiciary.
The two judges – Cecilyn Burgos-Villavert of Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 84 and Jason Zapanta of Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 174 – are known for having issued defective search warrants that led to the killings and arrests of scores of activists.
Villavert is reapplying for a position in both the Court of Appeals (CA) and the Sandiganbayan while Zapanta is gunning again for a post in the CA. They were last interviewed for these positions in June 2024, but failed to make the grade.
Karapatan cited Villavert’s reputation as a “search warrant factory” for issuing questionable search warrants that led to the arrest and filing of trumped-up charges against 76 activists from 2018 to 2020.
Zapanta, on the other hand, issued two of the search warrants that targeted 24 individuals in Rizal, Batangas, Cavite and Laguna and resulted in the March 7, 2021 killing of nine Southern Tagalog activists, in what is now known as “Bloody Sunday”. Six activists were also arrested in the region-wide operation conducted by the police and the military.
Zapanta was responsible for issuing the search warrant that justified the pre-dawn raid on the house of activist couple Ana Mariz and Ariel Evangelista, who were both killed. The policemen responsible for the killings have been exonerated in a sham investigation by the Department of Justice.
Warrants issued by the two judges have been quashed on the bases of various deficiencies, including Villavert and Zapanta’s failure to ask the probing and exhaustive questions necessary to determine probable cause.
Due to such deficiencies, many of the cases that resulted from the warrants issued by Villavert and Zapanta have been dismissed on their merits and the detained activists released.
However, three ailing and elderly activists, all of them in their seventies and arrested on the basis of warrants issued by Villavert remain in jail. NDFP consultant Vicente Ladlad and his co-accused Alberto and Virginia Villamor face a number of health challenges, with Ladlad having had to undergo treatment for tuberculosis contracted while in detention, and Virginia Villamor currently confined at the Taguig-Pateros District Hospital after she temporarily lost consciousness as her blood pressure shot up to dangerous levels.
According to KARAPATAN, given their record, neither Villavert nor Zapanta possesses the needed competence, integrity, probity and independence to serve as justices of the Court of Appeals or the Sandiganbayan. The human rights group appealed to the Judicial and Bar Council, which screens applicants for posts in the judiciary, to consider the facts that have been presented and immediately disqualify Villavert and Zapanta from the positions they have reapplied for.