Man gets 4 years for illegal possession of lumber

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Monday, February 13, 2012

A MAN who was caught transporting 68 pieces of lumber without government permit in Davao del Norte early last year may stay behind bars for four years after he pleaded guilty to the charges.

Upon an order by a regional trial court in Tagum City, Leonard Facon was sentenced to suffer the "indeterminate sentence of one year of prision correccional as minimum, to four years of prision correccional as maximum."

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Facon was arrested on March 14 last year by government operatives for transporting dipterocarps without proper permits from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Kapalong town, also in Davao del Norte.

Loaded on an Isuzu truck driven by Facon himself, the confiscated forest products had a total volume 8,187.08 board feet, and estimated value of P204,677.

Per court records, Facon had initially pleaded not guilty to the charge of violating the forestry law during his arraignment on October 27, 2011.

However, during the pre-trial on November 29, the accused chose to enter into a plea bargain, which was accepted by the public prosecutor and the DENR, being the complainant.

As a result, Facon withdrew his previous plea and was re-arraigned. Aided by lawyer Justino Aventurado, Facon voluntarily pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of simple theft as defined under Article 309, paragraph 2 of the Revised Penal Code.

Last year, the government launched massive tree planting activities in various denuded areas to increase forest cover, which is currently pegged at 7.2 million hectares or 26 percent of the country’s land area of 30 million hectares.

Forests stabilize the soil, thus, reducing the incidents of landslide while regulating the flow of water by storing them in the watershed.

On January, a landslide in the mineral-rich province of Compostela Valley near Davao del Norte claimed at least 25 lives as unrelenting rainfall caused the saturation of soil. (Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)