Legal lesson 3: Secondary evidence is justified by Rule 130 of the Rules of Court

Sec. 5   “When the original document has been lost or destroyed, or cannot be produced in court, the offeror, upon proof of its execution or existence and the cause of its unavailability without bad faith on his part, may prove its contents by a copy, or by a recital of its contents in some authentic document, or by the testimony of witnesses in the order stated.”

Professor Tony La Viña instructs on the validity of secondary evidence offered in the Trillanes Amnesty case being heard in a Makati branch of the RTC.

In an analysis under Rappler’s column “Thought Leaders” the Scholar and Public Intellectual discussed the tenuous grounds of Proclamation No 572 voiding an amnesty granted eight years earlier under the previous administration.

The full commentary may be accessed at: https://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/213531-analysis-at-stake-trillanes-amnesty-case?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1538710737