The Supreme Court (SC) has ordered National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) director Magtanggol Gatdula and six other officials to each pay a P20,000 fine, as it found them guilty of indirect contempt for losing the semen specimen found in the body of Carmela Vizconde.

In a recent 26-page resolution, the SC 3rd Division partly granted the contempt petition of Hubert Webb, one of the suspects in the Vizconde massacre case whom the SC acquitted in a December 14, 2010 decision.

Besides Gatdula, also held liable were former directors Carlos Caabay and Nestor Mantaring, medico-legal officers Renato Bautista and Prospero Cabanayan, and lawyers Floresto Arizala, Jr., Reynaldo Esmeralda and Arturo Figueras.

Webb was accused of raping and murdering Carmela, as well as killing her mother Estrellita and her sister Jennifer in their house in BF Homes, Parañaque City, on June 30, 1991.

He was initially convicted by the Parañaque City Regional Trial Court (RTC) on January 6, 2000, a verdict that the Court of Appeals (CA) affirmed on December 16, 2005.

Following the promulgation of the Rule on DNA Evidence, the SC on April 20, 2010 granted Webb’s request to order a testing on the semen specimen found in Carmela’s cadaver.

But, on April 27, 2010, the NBI claimed the specimen was no longer in its custody because it was submitted as evidence to the RTC, when its medico-legal chief Cabanayan testified from January to February 1996.

The RTC Branch 274 clerk of court denied this claim and said only photographs of the slides containing the vaginal smear were marked in evidence. Bautista’s April 23, 1997 certification confirmed that the slides themselves were in the NBI’s custody.

Yet, on July 16, 2010, Cabanayan backed up the NBI’s claim that he submitted the semen specimen to the court, while Bautista denied responsibility and said he merely relied on information given to him by the Pathology Section.

The SC agreed with Webb that the NBI officials “acted with gross negligence in safekeeping the specimen in their custody.”

It cited the transcripts of the RTC hearings in which Cabanayan testified on February 5, 1996 that he could not bring the slides because “I forgot all about it.” Two days later, he testified that he last saw the slides in 1995.

“These exchanges before the trial court belie respondents’ claim that they submitted the sperm specimen to the court… The actual slides were never submitted in court,” read the decision penned by Associate Justice Marvic Leonen.

The SC said the NBI officials failed to convince it that they acted in the regular performance of their duty and explain the contradicting claims.

“The facts here sufficiently prove that, indeed, there was willful disobedience,” read the decision.

However, the SC denied Webb’s petition to hold agents Pedro Rivera and John Herra in contempt for allegedly coaching star witness Jessica Alfaro in identifying him as Carmela’s rapist and murderer.

The SC said the NBI agents “were not shown to have planned a deliberate scheme to inculpate” Webb.

Webb’s sole evidence was the unsupported testimony of lawyer Artemio Sacaguing, who claimed to have been told by Alfaro that Rivera asked her to execute a second affidavit.

As for Herra, Webb presented the testimony of NBI agent Mark Anthony So. But, all So said was that Herra asked him if Webb was the person in the picture while Alfaro was around.

“Intent is a necessary element in criminal contempt. This Court cannot cite a person for criminal contempt unless the evidence makes it clear that he or she intended to commit it,” read the decision