Recantation is not an eraser
A retraction can be bought or coerced as easily as testimony can, often more easily, because by then the witness is isolated, exposed, and out of money.
A retraction can be bought or coerced as easily as testimony can, often more easily, because by then the witness is isolated, exposed, and out of money.
When Orly Guteza withdrew his sworn account of delivering suitcases of cash, and several of the other “maleta boys” did the same, the immediate reaction in some quarters was that the case had collapsed. That reading misunderstands how evidence works.
A recantation deletes nothing. It adds. The first statement stays in the record; the second one joins it. Both were made under oath, both are evidence, and both now have to be explained by the man who made them.
Picture a witness who swears it rained on Tuesday, then returns months later to swear the sun was out. Nothing he says changes the weather. Only one account can be true. What the second statement establishes with certainty is that he lied under oath at least once. The burden then shifts to him: which one was the lie, why, and who was standing behind him on each occasion.
Or picture a ledger. Crossing out an entry does not put the money back in the vault. It only raises new questions: who handed him the pen, and what did it cost?
This is why our courts have long treated recantations with greater suspicion than the statements they seek to withdraw. A retraction can be bought or coerced as easily as testimony can, often more easily, because by then the witness is isolated, exposed, and out of money. If a signature under oath could be cancelled by a later signature under oath, the party with the deeper pockets and the longer patience would always win. Trials would be decided by attrition rather than proof.
A case is also not a stool standing on one leg. Ask a doctor what he does when a patient gives him two contradictory histories. He does not throw away the first chart. He orders the X-ray. In an investigation, the X-ray is the paper: bank records, contracts, project documents, delivery logs, timelines, and other witnesses with direct knowledge.
Testimony explains documents; documents discipline testimony. A complaint built on both does not rise or fall with one man’s change of heart.
Fairness requires the same rule in reverse. The counter-affidavits submitted by the defense are evidence too. They deserve to be weighed, not waved away — and they are not a verdict either.
No affidavit, from any side, is self-executing. Contradiction is precisely why we hold hearings, allow confrontation, and leave the last word to a tribunal rather than to a press conference.
So the reversal is not the story. The ordinary work that follows is: matching every version against the record, and pursuing whoever induced a false one. Because if a witness was paid or pressured to lie in either direction, that is not a retraction. That is a crime, and it should be charged.
