Vice President Sara Duterte was ordered to be arrested by a Quezon City court on Friday, deepening the legal siege mounted against the country’s second highest official who is on trial before the Senate on separate articles of impeachment.

Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 98 Judge Maria Angelica P. de Ramos signed the warrant covering three counts of grave threats filed by the Department of Justice in relation to Section 6 of Republic Act 10175, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.

Bail was set at P120,000 per count, for a total of P360,000. Grave threats is a bailable offense, and defense lawyers Paul Lawrence Lim and Clifford Chua are expected to move quickly to post bond and secure Duterte’s release.

Former Chief Presidential Counsel Salvador Panelo, however, said the court should recall the warrant.

A decision to deny the motion to quash or recall the warrant of arrest issued against Duterte is in grave error, he said.

Immunity from suit applies to the top two officials of the government based on jurisprudence, Panelo added.

“The Constitution does not expressly grant a sitting president immunity from suit. Jurisprudence, however, has created a precedent that gives the President immunity because, given his presidential duties, he should not be distracted by any case filed against him from performing them,” Panelo said.

He contended that the rationale for the presidential immunity from suit applied to the Vice President as well.

“The Vice President has duties to perform too, and like the President, should not be bothered by suits that will diminish her focus on her official work,” he said.

Moreover, the crime of grave threats is the basis of Article 4 of the impeachment complaint and she is already being tried for that.

“There will be a constitutional incongruity if the decisions of two courts are incompatible with each other,” Panelo held.

Since the Vice President is already on trial for an impeachable offense arising from grave threats, it stands to reason that the regional trial court should either dismiss the case or, at the very least, suspend the trial and quash or recall the warrant it issued, he explained.

Palace Press Officer Claire Castro issued a brief response, saying, “The Palace respects any decision or order issued by the court.”

Midnight rant

The charges trace to remarks made by Duterte in her infamous online meltdown on 23 November 2024 where she said she had contracted someone to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former Speaker Martin Romualdez if she herself were killed.

She insisted at the time that she was not joking.

Duterte later maintained that her remarks were mischaracterized, describing them instead as a statement about a threat to her own security rather than a threat against the President’s family.

The National Bureau of Investigation’s complaint over the episode led the DoJ to file the three counts in August this year.

The warrant issued yesterday followed the court’s denial of a defense motion to defer or recall the charges. The DoJ said the court found probable cause to hold VP Duterte for trial on all three counts, and that the department “respects the ruling and reaffirms its commitment to the rule of law.”

Duterte’s camp, through counsel Lim, said the Vice President “has no intention of evading the law and will continue to exercise all her legal remedies,” regardless of the jurisdictional questions her lawyers have raised.

Legal torrent

The warrant lands amid an already extraordinary run of legal exposures for the Vice President.

She is on trial before the Senate on impeachment articles that survived a Supreme Court ruling voiding the first attempt on procedural grounds, with her defense team navigating the case toward the contested 16-vote conviction threshold.

The grave threats case itself has already generated controversy inside the courtroom.

Judge De Ramos disclosed, before hearing arguments on Duterte’s earlier bid to dismiss the charges, that she and the Vice President were sorority sisters in Sororitas Reginae Juris at the San Beda College of Law, a disclosure that drew scrutiny over recusal standards even as De Ramos proceeded to hear the case.

Friday’s order does not resolve the underlying question of whether the November 2024 remarks constituted a genuine threat or a defensive overstatement born of a besieged politician’s anxiety.

The warrant formalizes, for the first time, the state’s willingness to treat Duterte as a criminal defendant rather than merely an impeachment respondent.