A Supreme Court (SC) justice no longer leaves his home these days without bodyguards, a marked change in his life since he joined the high court a year ago. That's after he has been tipped off about an alleged contract on his life. “I was informed of a death threat. The court found the information reliable and is looking into it,” Brion said in an interview. “This is part of the risk that I have to undergo.” Brion declined to be specific about the information that he received. He said the threat has to do with a drug case, but did not want to elaborate. The most he could say was: “If anything happens to a justice of the Supreme Court, it will have a chilling effect on the judiciary.” Sixteen judges have been killed since 1999. Last year, the Supreme Court announced a total of P1-million reward for people who can give information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of the killers. Brion has already reported the threat on his life to the police. In April this year, the Court, through its second division where Brion is a member, affirmed the conviction of a drug dealer, German Agojo, by the lower courts. Agojo is serving a life sentence in the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa. Then Justice Dante Tinga wrote the decision and the rest of the division members—Justices Leonardo Quisumbing, Conchita Carpio-Morales, Presbitero Velasco Jr. and Brion—concurred. Agojo was charged at the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Tanauan, Batangas, with selling shabu or methamphetamine hydrochloride in 1999 and was convicted. Years later, in 2007, the Court of Appeals affirmed the RTC's decision, and this was recently upheld by the Supreme Court. But the Court's unanimous decision wasn't reached smoothly. Tinga, in his draft decision, was for conviction and the other justices ultimately joined him. Sources say there was an argument as, initially, one of the justices was for the acquittal of Agojo. (This was one of the last cases Tinga handled; he retired in May.) Apparently, the deliberations were leaked to the accused. The court has learned from its own sources that the reason for the threat is that Brion blocked the acquittal of Agojo. Sources said that Brion wrote Chief Justice Reynato Puno a memo to report about the serious breach of confidentiality of Court deliberations. Brion has reason to fear for his life. The RTC judge in Batangas who convicted Agojo, Voltaire Rosales, was killed in 2004. He was gunned down near the hall of justice in Tanauan by two men aboard a motorcycle. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered a speedy investigation into the murder after she met with the widow of Rosales in Malaca?ang in June 2004. The main suspect, Aldrin Galicia, is detained at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa; he was convicted in 2007, according to the Bureau of Corrections. The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group and the Tanauan police have said that Galicia is a member of a gun-for-hire group. Sources in the judiciary say Rosales's murder is linked to the Agojo case. Tanauan used to be a drug dealer's haven. In 2002, one of the biggest drug financiers in the city was murdered. And the biggest amount of shabu seized In Tanauan, up to 2003, was from Agojo in a drug buy-bust operation. Today, the Philippines, according to the 2009 World Drug Report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, ranks fifth in the world in terms of shabu seizures from 1998 to 2007. The same report shows that the Philippines has the highest annual prevalence of use of amphetamines in East and Southeast Asia. A few years ago, former Senator Ernesto Herrera warned that drug syndicates are getting footholds in the Philippines and expressed fear that the country might go the way of Colombia. ABS
