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Monday, May 24, 2004
Alona case: Judge ‘may have a lot to explain’
CEBU CITY -- A former prosecutor said Barili Regional Trial Court Judge Ildefonso Suerte may have a lot of explaining to do when he convicted Cedric Divinadira for being an accessory to the crime of Alona Bacolod-Ecleo.
That, as Ruben Ecleo’s lawyer Giovanni Mata said the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) will be going overboard if it continues with its plan to investigate the judge.
Mata, in a long-distance interview, said the NBI would be usurping the authority and power of the judiciary if it investigates the judge for convicting Divinadira as accessory to the murder of Alona Bacolod-Ecleo.
“What they are doing is even contemptuous because there is already a pending motion for reconsideration filed with the court,” Mata said.
The NBI has also summoned the mother and brother of Divinadira in the hope of finding out what led to the confession and conviction, which the agency considers anomalous because of the pending criminal case of parricide against Ecleo in the Cebu RTC.
But former Lapu-Lapu City prosecutor Celso Espinosa, in an interview, told Sun.Star that Judge Suerte should have been more cautious before handing out the decision that convicted Divinadira and sentenced him to four to eight years in jail.
He said the jurisdiction of the Barili RTC should have been ascertained first because parricide, murder or homicide is not a continuous crime.
“It has to be determined if the killing indeed happened within his jurisdiction. It would have been different if the case filed was for kidnapping, which is a continuous crime, where it can be filed in any of the areas where the crime was committed,” Espinosa said.
Another possible lapse in Suerte’s ruling is the fact that Divinadira was convicted as an accessory even before establishing the guilt or liability of the principal.
“I think that in this case, the liability of the principal has to be determined before ruling on the liability of the accessory. He should have also determined the ‘voluntariness’ of Divinadira’s allegations,” Espinosa said.
Espinosa also wondered why it was Assistant Prosecutor Vicente Mañalac who filed the information against Divinadira, when he is with the Office of the Regional State Prosecutor.
“Being with the Office of the RSP, he must have a concurrent designation placing him at the provincial prosecutor’s office, so that he could file the information there,” Espinosa said.
But Orlando Salatandre Jr., who is also defending Ecleo in his parricide case, said the fiscal and the judge are enjoying the presumption of regularity in the performance of their official functions.
“All those who are complaining must prove with direct evidence that there is money involved or there is collusion between private individuals and government lawyers and judges,” Salatandre said.
He even said that Divinadira should be given credit for owning up to the crime and for wanting justice to prevail.
“He should be credited because he did not win the sweepstakes here. Remember, this fellow will go to Muntinlupa,” Salatandre said.
Mata also confirmed to Sun.Star that Ecleo was already in Dinagat, Surigao del Norte since last week to attend a conference of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association.
But he stressed that Ecleo will be flown back to Manila for hospital confinement after the organizational conference.
Ecleo, who is out of jail after posting P1 million as bail, is charged with parricide for allegedly killing his wife Alona in their house in Banawa, Cebu City last Jan. 5, 2002.
Divinadira later admitted in an extra-judicial confession that it was Alona’s late brother, Ben, who allegedly killed her and that he (Divinadira) helped Ben in disposing of Alona’s body.
Ben was killed long before he could clear himself of Divinadira’s accusation. Ben, his sister and his parents were shot down outside their home in Mandaue City in June 2002, just five months after Alona’s death. GN
(May 24, 2004 issue)
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