A ten-member group of lawyers unaffiliated with Vice President Sara Duterte’s legal team brought the impeachment proceedings against her before the Supreme Court on Friday, arguing that the House committee on justice overstepped its constitutional boundaries in advancing the case.
The petition for certiorari and prohibition, spanning 186 pages, named the House of Representatives and its justice panel — chaired by Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro — as respondents. The lawyers, filing as citizens and taxpayers, are seeking either a temporary restraining order or a writ of preliminary injunction to halt the proceedings.
Victor Rodriguez, who previously served as executive secretary under President Marcos, said the group was “optimistic” the high court would rule in their favor — pointing to a prior Supreme Court decision that struck down the first House-endorsed impeachment complaint against Duterte for violating the constitutional bar on filing more than one impeachment case against the same official within a year. That ruling, the high court had clarified, “did not absolve” Duterte of the alleged impeachable offenses.
Lead petitioner Israelito Torreon, a Davao-based lawyer who has also represented jailed televangelist Apollo Quiboloy and absentee Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, said the committee on justice committed “grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction” when it declared the third and fourth impeachment complaints sufficient in form, substance, and grounds.
The third complaint — which carried allegations of culpable violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, misuse of confidential funds, corruption and bribery, unexplained wealth, failure to fully disclose assets in her SALN, and alleged high crimes of sedition and insurrection — had been supported by Rep. Kiko Aquino-Dee, who withdrew an earlier second complaint in its favor, saying both contained the same allegations.
Torreon took particular issue with the committee’s decision during a March 25 hearing to approve subpoenas for Duterte’s SALN records from 2007 to 2025, as well as documents from the National Bureau of Investigation relating to the vice president’s alleged threats against President Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former Speaker Martin Romualdez in November 2024.
“What the committee could not sustain through lawful threshold review, it sought to preserve through procedural overreach,” Torreon said at a press conference held after the petition was filed.
He argued that the complaints relied on “conclusions” and “suspicions” rather than direct recitals of justiciable facts, saying they “cannot rest on labels, suspicions, hearsay, unauthenticated materials and investigatory speculation.”
The group also contested Luistro’s characterization of the House proceedings as a “mini-trial,” arguing the description itself exposed a constitutional violation.
“The 1987 Constitution mandates that trials be held in the Senate, and the House, indeed, overstepped its boundaries and is conducting its own mini-trial, which is not to our humble mind, within the contemplation of the 1987 Constitution, in so far as the function of the House of Representatives, specifically the committee of justice, is concerned,” Torreon said.
On the question of defective complaints, Torreon drew a clear line: “If a complaint is insufficient in substance at the start, it must be dismissed rather than bolstered.”
