[] Ruling said Atty. Patiño "might have (raped) her under a different set of circumstances." "But evidence before the court says there's no other conscientious choice but to uphold his innocence."
[] There was a victim -- the girl who cried "Rape!" -- but apparently, the court cannot declare that she was or was not raped and Patiño did or did not rape her. To the court, there is just no "evidence beyond reasonable doubt" that he committed the crime.
WHAT HAPPENED. Lawyer Juril Broka Patiño was charged in court last May 29, 2018 with raping a 13-year-old girl on July 4, 2017 in Barangay Parian, Cebu City. Patiño allegedly used force and intimidation and had sex with the minor without her consent. Atty. Patiño eluded a warrant of arrest until more than a year later, July 22, 2019, when NBI agents caught him.
Denying publicly the accusation, ño also pleaded not guilty when arraigned on August 2, 2019. In that year, the court granted him bail October 18 and was released October 21 on a P450,000 bail. The State made legal moves to block the grant of bail but failed in Regional Trial Court and Court of Appeals.
On October 1, 2024, or about seven years after the alleged rape, RTC Branch 20, Cebu City Presiding Judge Leah I. Geraldez acquitted Atty. Patiño of the crime of rape.
Here are takeaways from the RTC ruling:
[1] "ON GROUND OF REASONABLE DOUBT" is the law's blanket reason for clearing Patiño, which the judge cited in concluding paragraphs of its 31-page decision.
The court summed it up thus: The prosecution "failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt" all the elements of the crime of rape (under article 266-A, paragraph 1, the Revised Penal Code).
[2] "MATERIAL LAPSES" MADE GIRL'S TESTIMONY "NOT CREDIBLE," credibility being cited as the first of two bases for convicting the accused. Those "lapses and inaccuracies," the court said, "cast reasonable doubt on the identity" of the person who raped her.
The credibility of the complainant, the ruling noted, is "the most important issue in the prosecution of rape cases." The "categorical and candid testimony" of the complainant is enough and a culprit "may be convicted solely on the basis of her testimony."
The court apparently gave credence and merit to the list of alleged mistakes of the complainant, which Patiño submitted as his major defense and eventually cleared him.
[3] JUDGE RECOGNIZES PRECEPTS THAT FAVOR COMPLAINANT BUT... RTC Judge Geraldez waved the legal principles that back the rape victim even as the court took each one down, such as these:
* Patiño set up a defense of alibi and denial -- he wasn't and couldn't be at the crime scene -- is "by nature weak," the court said, but it "assumes... significance and strength" and becomes "complete and legitimate defense" when the prosecution's evidence is "intrinsically weak."
The court said "it would strain the imagination" how Atty. Juril could've taken nine-minute drives to and from J.C. Zamora street, where the alleged rape took place, and raped the girl in between, "within the six-minute interval when is whereabouts were unknown..."
* Electronic and documentary pieces of evidence presented by Patiño, which lacked authentication, are inadmissible but "procedural rules are precisely conceived to help attain justice, not to hinder it." In other words, follow court procedure when it serves justice and set them aside when it does not?
* The court acknowledges confusion of the complainant, lapses and pain in recalling the experience, even as it admires the "bravery" in standing up and seeking "retribution." Still judges, the ruling said, must assess each case with extreme caution and "must free themselves of the natural tendency to be overprotective of every girl or woman decrying her defilement and demanding punishment for the abuser."
[4] COURT FINDS FACTUAL RAPE FROM TESTIMONY OF GIRL. The complainant's testimony "could have sustained a conviction," meaning the court believed there was a rape and the complainant was raped, but... And here's the "but": The prosecutors failed "to identify and attribute all the elements of rape to" accused Patiño.
The testimony, in the court's mind, didn't "establish the identity of the accused" as the rapist. And the prosecution failed to prove that Patiño did all the acts constituting as elements of the crime. The reason: "material lapses and inaccuracies" in the complainant's testimony.
It would seem that the first basis for conviction couldn't stand, which in turn pulled down the second basis as well.
[5] DATE OF RAPE, COLOR OF CAR, WHAT HE WORE. The complainant had told police and the doctor that she was raped on July 4 (2017) but later changed it in court to July 3. The confusion of the girl about the date the crime was committed had no bearing, the doctor testifying for the prosecutor said, "It would not make any difference."
But it mattered to the court, which noted that the complainant was not recalled to the witness stand to clarify her contradictory answers, which were given one day apart. The date became important, the ruling said, when it created "serious doubt" on the "commission of the crime" or the "sufficiency of evidence" to convict the accused.
Hard to believe, the court said, that "the sole witness to the crime" was "vague about the day she was molested, mistook what the accused was wearing and the color of the car in which she was raped." Apparently, the judge didn't think that trauma from the experience would make the rape forget the important details. By the way, record-keeping of Patiño's actual "on-board" schedule helped prop up his defense of alibi.
[6] PLACE OF CRIME SET OFF DISBELIEF, or so that's how the court must have assessed it, as part of its credibility test. Zamora St., the crime scene, was a busy area, with many people walking about or crossing the street. Plus the car was lightly tinted, through which anyone looking in or via the glass window could see activity inside the vehicle. Besides, a doctor testifying for the defense said, it would've been difficult to do the sex act on the back seat.
Prosecutors may not have tried to refute that with Supreme Court's famous quote, "Lust is no respecter of time or place," there's no rule that rape cannot be committed except in secluded places, and people have gotten used to "copulating under difficult conditions, even the presence of other people in the same room."
[Related: "Seares: Saving Juril Patiño in rape case," July 27, 2017].
[7] THE GIRL'S MOTIVE, IF THE JUDGE WAS RIGHT. From the ruling, one can't see any finding or even a speculation based on presented facts about why Patiño was dragged into the case and accused of rape.
If he was physically elsewhere, as his alibis alleged, who was the perp who raped the girl, a crime one doctor helped confirm, and court finding didn't rule out. The complainant didn't concoct the crime, the rape did happen, but why tag Patino if the complainant was not sure who had forced himself on her?
What was her motive, for heaven’s sake?
'HE DID OR MIGHT HAVE.' And if it was not Atty. Juril -- as he claimed to be on air in his radio station at the time -- who was it who had sex with a 13-year-old girl on the back seat of a car, garbed in long-sleeved, ala-barong shirt, as if he were still in court about to raise an exclamatory objection?
Judge Geraldez's declaration, a paragraph before her "Wherefore," tells a whole lot.
The ruling "is not to say the private complainant was not raped, or that the accused did not rape her, for he might have under a different set of circumstances."