Prosecutor: Misamis Oriental highest in acquittal, dismissal rate

NORTHERN Mindanao’s top government prosecutor on Wednesday said some judges should also get the blame for the region’s lackluster record in handling drug cases.

Regional State Prosecutor Jaime Umpa said the high rate of acquittal and dismissal of drug cases in the region should not only be blamed on sloppy police work and bad prosecution.

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He pointed out that judges wield greater control starting at the preliminary stages of a drug case, not to mention its outcome. Too often, he said, partial judges abuse their power.

Umpa issued the statement after the top official of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in the region (PDEA) said “corrupt” fiscals are in part accountable to the weak prosecution of drug suspects.

PDEA-Northern Mindanao Director Gilberto Abanto Jr. cited a case in Valencia City in Bukidnon province, where a certain prosecutor consented to the release of two drug suspects (not one, as earlier reported) even if their case was non-bailable. This all happened, he said, without the benefit of a preliminary hearing, and kept under wraps from the PDEA.

But Umpa said Abanto may have been misinformed.

On the contrary, the regional chief prosecutor it was a judge in Valencia City who paved the way for the release of the suspects by granting them to post P200,000 bail each.

He identified the prosecutor that Abanto was referring to as Valencia City Prosecutor John Magdarao.

Magdarao, Umpa said, “had no knowledge about the release of the suspects because it was the judge who granted the accused to post bail, based on our investigation.”

Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro is withholding the name of the judge, pending her comment on the matter.

Umpa said the judge “immediately granted the motion of the accused to post bail without even inquiring on the nature of the drug charges” -- whether bailable or not. The freed suspects, he said, were “big time drug pushers” who were charged under Section 5 of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, which sets no bail for the “sale, trading, dispensation, delivery, distribution, and transportation of dangerous drugs and essential chemicals.”

Based on their investigation, Umpa said they found out that the lawyers of the two suspects had clandestinely filed a motion to post bail at the sala of the unnamed judge, a woman who is residing in Cagayan de Oro.

“In fact, the motion was signed here in Cagayan de Oro because it was Friday and the judge was already home. The accused literally brought the papers here for the judge to sign,” the prosecutor said.

When the prosecution inquired on the basis of the suspects’ release, Umpa said the judge had nothing to show them because she had left the documents at home.

Before the judge granted the suspects to post bail, Umpa said the Valencia City prosecutor was confident the accused would not be released because they has already waive their rights and voluntary submitted themselves for preliminary investigation.

“So it’s the judge who should get the blame, not the prosecutor,” he said,

Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB) Undersecretary Paul Oaminal earlier said the failure of law enforcers to observe proper procedures in the conduct of buy-bust operations and in the inventory of drugs seized are among the common reasons for the dismissal of the case or the acquittal of the accused.

Out of Northern Mindanao’s 1,350 resolved drug cases in 2009, 362 or 27 percent resulted in the acquittal of the accused, compared to the national rate of 7.9 percent. Twenty five percent or 333 drug cases, meanwhile, were dismissed by the courts, DDB record shows.

Earlier, DDB said at least six local officials in Northern Mindanao are being suspected for their links to illegal drugs. Oaminal said the six officials are likely getting funds from drug lords to finance their respective campaigns, and that their involvement in illicit narcotics varies.

In its 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), Northern Mindanao was named, alongside Cebu and Manila, as one of the most illegal drug-hit areas in the Philippines.