Wednesday, June 25, 2008 CA grants P300,000 bail to suspect in GRO murder case By Gil Alfredo B. Severino
THE Court of Appeals Cebu station has granted a P300,000 bail to a suspect in the murder of a guest relations officer (GRO) in Bacolod last 2005.
CA Associate Justice Franchito Diamante along with associate justices Priscilla Baltazar-Padilla and Florito Macalino, "fixed at P300,000 subject to the lower court's approval" the bail for the temporary liberty of businesswoman Helen Aguadilla, proprietor of H.A. Money Changer.
They set aside the January 15, 2008 decision of Bacolod's Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 42 Judge Fernando Elumba.
"This Court finds that the evidence so far presented against the petitioner (Aguadilla) is not strong enough to warrant denial of her petition for admittance of bail," the June 20, 2008 CA decision stressed.
It cited a Supreme Court ruling that said, "Even in cases involving capital offenses, for the purpose of a bail petition, the probability of flight is one important factor to be taken into consideration".
"It is not justifiable to inflict upon petitioner the indignity of preventive imprisonment when her implication to the crime rests on sketchy circumstances," the 14-page decision added.
Court records showed that Aguadilla was implicated in the December 19, 2005 murder of Irene de la Peña by self-confessed suspect Mark Enriquez, who claimed the businesswoman was the mastermind behind De la Peña's killing.
De la Peña was stabbed in the chest by one Monroe Nielden Pitong and died after 18 days of hospitalization.
Pitong surrendered to the police on December 25, 2005 while his friends, named as Enriquez and Janse Amisola, yielded the following day.
The two narrated that one Roming Calalang told them that his boss wanted the victim to be crippled or blinded and that if they (Enriquez and Amisola) will agree to be the one to execute the act, he will pay them P15,000, the record added.
But the CA ruled that there is no direct evidence of Aguadilla's inducement of the other accused.
