Defense seeks to suppress Nora Aunor’s statement

WASHINGTON — Superstar Nora Aunor’s lawyer will ask a Los Angeles court to suppress a statement her client made to police after she was arrested last July on felony drug possession charges on the grounds that the Miranda rights were not recited to her.

Lawyer Claire Espina told The STAR the evidentiary hearing on the motion of the defense will be held before Aunor’s scheduled trial on Dec. 16.

"We’re going to have another mini-hearing involving the same police officers, this time solely on the issue of the Miranda violation and our contentions in the motion," she said.

Espina, a University of the Philippines graduate, said police interrogated Aunor without the benefit of a Miranda warning and ignored her request that she be provided with a Tagalog interpreter.

"The court will review the evidence we are seeking to suppress, hear both sides and then make a decision regarding the relevancy of the evidence and its prejudicial quality," she said.

"In addition to the Miranda violation, in our motion, we also attempted to raise a constitutional violation — that Miss Villamayor’s (Aunor) statement was rendered without full, voluntary, knowing and intelligent decision-making on her part."

Because Aunor has only a sixth grade education, it was important that an interpreter was present upon her arrest to make sure she understood all the legal nuances at the time she was being questioned, her lawyer added.

The term "Miranda rights" is derived from the landmark Miranda vs Arizona case decided by the US Supreme Court in 1966.

In that decision, the US court laid down the following guidelines for the investigation of a person under police custody:

• The person in custody must, prior to interrogation, be clearly informed that he has the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court.

• He must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.

Meanwhile, Aunor’s pretrial hearing scheduled for Thursday was reset to Dec. 12 because the presiding judge did not show up.  

Espina dismissed showbiz media reports that the prestigious Los Angeles law firm Edelberg and Espina had withdrawn from Aunor’s case.

"We are in the case for the long haul, whatever happens," she said.

Espina also labeled as preposterous reports that the actress had failed a drug test.  

"That is not true," she said. "There has not been a necessity for a drug test."  

Aunor, Nora Cabaltera Villamayor in real life, has been charged with having 7.7 grams of methamphetamine in her carry-on bag when she was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport on her way back to her San Francisco Bay area home after a business trip. 

She has denied the charge and is out on bail of $10,000.