The MURDER of pine trees goes unabated
The practice has NOT stopped. Land developers (there’s another contradiction in terms) wanting to eliminate a big hindrance to their plans are still killing PINE TREES in Baguio City the same effective way they invented: by drilling holes in these trees’ trunks and injecting poison to slowly destroy the trees’ cambium layer. The trees stay green for a few weeks, even months, but the slow irreversible injury eventually—nay, INEVITABLY—dries the trees’ upper branches and needles. The pine tree ultimately dies LONG AFTER their killers have slithered away from the crime scene. And you can’t lift fingerprints off a tree’s rough bark, of course.
No one has ever been punished for killing a pine tree, to say nothing of deliberately decimating a whole stand of pine trees. The culprits have always gotten away with it.
I put the blame squarely on the lap of government prosecutors who refuse to rise to the challenge. Mayor Benjie Magalong filed a criminal complaint against several “John Does” (meaning “suspect unidentified”) at the start of his term, seeking sanction against these “developers.” But government prosecutors DISMISSED the case for “lack of probable cause.”
Technically, they are correct because probable cause looks for a “reasonable ground to engender a well-founded belief that a crime has been committed, and that the person charged probably committed the crime.”
Prosecutors reasoned that they cannot charge a person who has not been identified.
But, like the rest of us lawyers in private practice, you have to keep up with developments in environmental law and climate science. In one case (Oposa v. Factoran, Google it!) the Supreme Court introduced the concept of “intergenerational responsibility” where it said an action to assert environmental protection rights can be filed by persons alive today in behalf of future generations.
If I were a government prosecutor, that would be MY sweet comfort to find probable cause against “John Doe.” So what if the culprit doesn’t have a name, the Supreme Court has hurled the challenge to the legal community, as if to say, “No, no, no–you don’t get off the hook that easy. This is the PLANET EARTH we’re talking about here! You gotta try harder!”
These unnamed tree killers have violated the rights of BILLIONS, or JILLIONS of Filipinos who are not only unidentified, they couldn’t even be given names yet because they haven’t even been BORN!
So don’t let them hide conveniently behind anonymity, indict those bastards. Use every tool in your toolbox.
An intelligent pro-active prosecutor would indict John Doe, the Rules allow that. Then he should present evidence, even just part of the dead tree would be enough. Then several presumptions and doctrinal jurisprudence kick into play.
Qui bono? “Who benefited” from the elimination of the trees? Obviously, the clearing of the land made it suitable for construction, enabling the developer to erect a lucrative commercial structure. How is that NOT benefiting from the killing of the pine trees?
If the developer insists he will NOT benefit from the criminal act, then the government prosecutor must ask the court to seal that commitment by ordering the area cleared of trees to be off limits to construction in perpetuity.
That’s a gutsy move. It is, that’s why it would take a gutsy, intelligent and pro-active prosecutor to do it. He must submit a level-headed ratiocination for it, perhaps (among other ways) by asserting that the area cleared of the pine trees is part of the corpus delicti (body of the crime) which CANNOT be given to the culprit—for that would amount to rewarding the accused with the fruit of his crime. If you carnapped a vehicle and you are convicted for it, do you get to KEEP the car?
Of course not. It is returned to its true owner. WHO are the true owners of an oxygen-producing pine tree, or TREES plural, growing on an erosion-proof block of organic nutrient-holding soil? All future generations, that’s who.
If the developer is unhappy with that kind of Decision, of course he can elevate his appeal all the way to the Supreme Court and ask the en banc to REVERSE the doctrine of “intergenerational responsibility.”
Then the pressure on the government prosecutor is off. The battle of wits versus lame excuse would now be between the TREE KILLERS and the tree-hugging Supreme Court justices.
Kelangan lang iyabot hanggang sa Supreme Court. That is how crucial it is for some government prosecutors to seriously grow a pair.***
Post script: after you’re done reading this, take a look at these stomach-cringing pictures taken by my tocayo retired Baguio photojournalist Joel Art “Artibal” Tibaldo (husband of hardworking PIA Director Helen Tibaldo) of some of these tree MURDER victims:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10221692381324295&id=1397806177
About the Author
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”
About Images: Some of the images used in the articles are from the posts in Atty. Joel Rodriguez Dizon’s Facebook account, and/or Facebook groups and pages he manages or/and member of.