Saturday, June 28, 2008 TV repairman gets life term for drugs
THE Regional Trial Court (RTC) yesterday sentenced a television repairman to life in prison for selling shabu to an undercover police asset in an entrapment operation.
Baby Awi Borres was also fined P500,000.
RTC Judge Gabriel Ingles, in a 10-page decision handed down yesterday, said Borres’ defense that he was framed by arresting officers could not hold water.
“Frame-up, like alibi, is a weak defense,” the judge said.
Borres was arrested at around 7 p.m. last January 3, 2007.
The police, acting on information that Borres peddled shabu when not fixing television sets, had an asset go to his house in Sitio Cogon, Barangay Labangon, to buy drugs.
A team of non-unformed policemen waited outside for the asset to give the signal that the drugs and money had changed hands.
SPO2 Rogelio Cañete Jr., in his testimony, said only he had a direct line-of-sight on the undercover asset and the suspected peddler.
Everybody else would still get the cue, though, when the asset flung a face towel he had on his pocket over his shoulder.
According to Cañete, the exchange was consummated quickly.
And when the signal was given, he and two other policemen, PO3 Geoffrey Borinaga and another only identified as Guarin, rushed to tackle the alleged peddler.
The prosecution presented Borinaga in court for direct and cross examination but dispensed with calling Jude Mendoza to the witness stand.
The defense, on the other hand, called one Carlito Seguros, Maria Shielo Albores and the accused as witnesses.
Seguros countered the policemen’s testimony that the arrest was carried out inside Borres’ house after a legitimate buy-bust. He said Borres was collared near a marketplace and was simply tackled and frisked by people who later turned out to be policemen.
Albores, for her part, said it was she who was in the house at the time of the supposed buy-bust and saw nothing happened.
Borres, meanwhile, said he was in the marketplace, where Seguros saw him, to buy dinner.
Search
He said he was simply accosted by four men and frisked. He said they found nothing on him during the search but, nevertheless, he was still brought to a waiting car and interrogated about the whereabouts of a certain David, whom he said he didn’t know.
He was brought to the station and charged before the prosecutor’s office the following day.
“The burden of the prosecution is to establish beyond reasonable doubt that herein accused did sell, deliver or give-away to a poseur buyer said dangerous drugs,” Ingles said.
He added that the testimonies of the prosecution’s witnesses satisfied the requirement. Moreover, public officials like policemen enjoy the presumption of regularity in the performance of their duties.
The defense, on the other hand, merely said the accused was framed-up without introducing the proof needed to counter the presumption of regularity policemen enjoy. (KNR)
