Thursday, September 28, 2006 Murder rap filed v. Soc’s son
WHERE is Joavan S. Fernandez?
After weeks of delay on the part of the Office of the Talisay City Prosecutor, a non-bailable murder case was finally filed against him yesterday for the Aug. 29 killing of Panfilo Barinque.
But Joavan isn’t going to see the insides of a prison just yet. Talisay City policemen still have to look for City Mayor Socrates Fernandez’s adopted son and take him into custody.
They had him in custody. He surfaced when the police filed a separate complaint for murder and frustrated murder against him for the death of Barinque and the injuries sustained by the latter’s companion, Timoteo Aleo, two days after the Aug. 29 shooting.
He was detained at the Talisay Police Office and even allowed himself to undergo a paraffin test.
Bail
But the Office of the Talisay City Prosecutor, headed by lawyer Marshall Rubia, did not endorse both cases simultaneously. It endorsed to court the frustrated murder incident first.
Frustrated murder is a bailable offense. Joavan posted bail and was released.
It was not immediately known why both the murder and the frustrated murder cases were not filed simultaneously.
Based on records, Joavan invoked his right to a preliminary investigation on the murder charge and went through the entire process of submitting a counter-affidavit but allowed the frustrated murder charge to proceed under inquest rules.
On inquest, a complaint is immediately endorsed to court. But in a preliminary investigation, the accused answers the points raised against him in the complaint through a counter-affidavit. The former takes merely hours while the latter can take up to 15 days.
But a court official, who asked not to be named, said detainees like Joavan should have been kept in detention while awaiting the resolution of the preliminary investigation.
He said the boy should have been asked to sign a waiver of detention, which is what most other people who are caught in relation to an offense do, but invoke their rights under preliminary investigation.
Barinque and Aleo were shot in the vicinity of Maglasang Village, Cansojong, Talisay City, at around 3:30 a.m. last Aug. 29.
According to the police and their witnesses, Joavan Fernandez, on board a Toyota Revo and in the company of four other people, arrived on the scene, alighted from his car, approached both Barinque and Aleo and began shooting them with a .45 cal. pistol.
Barinque was hit four times and, according to City Prosecutor Rubia’s resolution, died instantly.
Gunpowder test
Aleo, for his part, suffered “severe gunshot wounds” and was brought to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center.
A complaint was lodged and attached to the charge sheet was a PNP Crime Laboratory report that found Joavan positive for gunpowder nitrates in a paraffin test.
Joavan submitted a counter-affidavit to the murder charge and alleged that he was nowhere near the crime scene when the shooting took place.
He said he was in the House of Prayer in Barangay Candulawan and that he slept from 11 p.m. of Aug. 28, 2006 to about 5:30 a.m. of Aug. 29.
He also questioned the manner by which the investigators of the Talisay Police Station handled the case, more particularly the manner upon which he was identified as a suspect in the incident.
“Basically, the defense raised by herein respondent is alibi, which is one of the weakest defense,” Rubia’s resolution on the murder case read.
“The positive identification by complainant’s witness, Timoteo Aleo, of respondent Joavan S. Fernandez as the perpetrator of the alleged crime, and the other evidences submitted before this investigator far outweigh the defense of alibi by the respondent, to establish probable cause,” he ruled. (KNR)
