Wednesday, October 19, 2005
CA invalidates Cedrick ruling
By Grecar Nilles
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
The Court of Appeals has declared null the conviction of Cedrick Devinadera, who confessed that he helped kill Alona Bacolod-Ecleo and identified Alona’s brother Ben as the real killer.
In a ruling last Monday, the appeals court called the Devinadera case a “sham and a travesty of justice.”
Devinadera can now walk away from the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, where he was locked up after being sentenced to four years and two months up to eight years in jail.
Lawyers defending former mayor Ruben Ecleo Jr., who stands accused of killing his wife Alona, had planned to use Devinadera’s conviction in their defense.
For the prosecution panel in the Ecleo parricide case, this means “one defense less” for lawyers Orlando Salatandre Jr. and Giovanni Mata.
Salatandre, however, said the Court of Appeals (CA) decision will hardly affect their defense strategy.
For the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Cebu City Chapter, which intervened in the case, that ruling was a triumph of justice.
The former judge Ildefonso Suerte had convicted Devinadera, using the man’s confession, but Barili Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Leopoldo V. Cañete declared the conviction null.
The complainant against Devinadera, Jaime Bacolod, filed a petition for certiorari, but CA 20th Division Chairman Isaias Dicdican dismissed it.
Flawed
The 15-page decision listed three grounds for upholding the RTC ruling that invalidated Devinadera’s conviction:
* It was not the Office of the Solicitor-General that filed the case before the CA;
* Petitioner Jaime Bacolod is not a part of the compulsory heirs of victim Alona, who have the legal personality to file the case in the appellate court. Jaime, being only a cousin of Alona, could not be considered the offended party to file the case against
Devinadera; and
* There was nothing irregular in Judge Cañete’s order nullifying Devinadera’s conviction, since Suerte no longer had the authority to handle the case when he ruled on it.
“The proceedings conducted by erstwhile judge Suerte appear to be fatally flawed by the lack of authority of the said judge, irregularities in the conduct of said proceedings, manifest partiality on the part of said judge, rigging of proceedings, sham arraignment of the private respondent Devinadera, seeming collusion, and mockery or travesty of justice,” the ruling read.
Associate Justices Ramon M. Bato Jr. and Enrico A. Lanzanaz concurred with Dicdican’s ruling on the matter.
Devinadera, a member of the Ecleo-led Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA), had earlier claimed that he helped Alona’s brother, Ben, in killing her last Jan. 5, 2002 somewhere in Barili.
Although he was charged with murder, Devinadera pleaded guilty of homicide, a lesser offense.
Judge sacked
Suerte convicted Devinadera as an accomplice to the crime of homicide.
Ben could no longer defend himself, as he was among the four Bacolods gunned down in their residence in Mandaue City by a lone PBMA member in June 2002.
Devinadera only turned up in December 2003 and was convicted in May 2004.
The Supreme Court (SC) had dismissed Suerte from the government service for rendering, among others, the decision convicting Devinadera.
Assistant Regional State Prosecutor Vicente Maña-lac, former Provincial and City Prosecutor Cezar Tajanlangit, Assistant Provincial Prosecutor Napoleon Alburo, and lawyers Jose Neil Nuñez and Luis F. Salazar are facing disbarment cases in the SC for their involvement in the Devinadera case.
Prosecution lawyer Alfredo Sipalay told Sun.Star Cebu the CA decision will boost the prosecution’s case, since it showed there is only one accused and one circumstance in Alona’s death.
Fall guy
“It was very clear from the start that Devinadera was only a fall guy and everything was only a set-up in trying to free Ruben Ecleo from any criminal liability,” Sipalay said.
It was a “double victory” for lawyer Gloria Lastimosa-Dalawampu, who represented the Bacolod siblings in the IBP’s intervention in the case before the Barili RTC.
“First, we won in the South Coastal Road case. And now, the Devinadera case. From the start, I was confident that the theory used by Devinadera and his lawyers had no legs to stand on. It cannot stand on any legal and factual grounds,” Dalawampu said.
Dalawampu added that except for the victim, every circumstance in the Ecleo and Devinadera cases was “diametrically opposed.”
She plans to immediately push for Devinadera’s release, so that all those involved in the “complicated case” surrounding Ecleo can focus on the parricide case pending before RTC Branch 9 Geraldine Faith A. Econg.
(October 19, 2005 issue)
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