Prosecution: Sara Duterte hitman claim implies intent to kill president

MANILA, Philippines — On the second day of Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial, the House prosecution asserted that Duterte’s claims of hiring an individual to assassinate President Marcos Jr., first lady Liza Marcos, and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez established that Duterte has a “plan” to get the three killed.

Counsel to the prosecution Amando Ligutan remarked when Senator-Judge Risa Hontiveros asked how Duterte’s statements are impeachable given it is not proof that the vice president actually contracted an assassin.

“We understand that these statements may not actually 100% prove that she in fact contracted an assassin to kill the president, we are invoking a rule in the rules of evidence that there could be statements, utterances of a person that may not be directly similar to what he or she did, but it could establish what we call a specific intent, knowledge, identity, plan, system and the like,”  Ligutan explained.

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READ: Sara Duterte’s ‘kill threat’ video clip presented in impeachment trial

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He continued: “These statements, they prove one thing. The vice president really has a plan, really has a system, really has knowledge of what he wants to do to the president. He wants to behead him, he wants to kill him, no less than the president of the Republic of the Philippine.”

READ: Prosecution reserves right to have VP as witness in grave threats charge

Prior to Hontiveros’ question, the court viewed a series of clips, including a video from Nov. 23, 2024, of Duterte saying she already had contracted a hitman to take out the Marcos couple and Romualdez, should she pass away herself.

Then afterward, another clip of Duterte, from Oct. 18, 2024, was shown in which she admitted to imagining cutting Marcos Jr.’s head off.

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“What the vice president said that night, Nov. 23, 2024, was not the only statement made by the vice president; if not, it was the culmination of a series of statements by the vice president where he said he really wanted to kill the president, the first lady and former speaker of the House,” Ligutan stressed.

The lawyer further asserted that whether or not her statements were a criminal act, through such utterances, the vice president “betrayed the public trust.”

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“The vice president’s threat to the life of the president of the Republic of the Philippines is not normal. That was the first time that happened: he contracted with the murderer to do that. Even without going into the question of whether that is a criminal act, that act 110 percent sure betrayed the public trust that the vice president got during the previous election,” Ligutan emphasized. /mr

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