THE Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor dismissed the concubinage complaint filed by prosecutor Mary Ann Castro-Sanchez against Leodegreco (Greco) Sanchez and Maricel Gregory, citing Castro was not the right party to file the complaint.
In a two-page resolution, Assistant City Prosecutor Rodulph Carillo recommended the dismissal of the complaint last June 1, 2016, which was approved by Cebu City Prosecutor Liceria Lofranco Rabillas.
In dismissing the complaint, Carillo cited first paragraph of Article 344 of the Revised Penal Code that states, “The crimes of adultery and concubinage shall not be prosecuted except upon a complaint filed by the offended spouse.”
The prosecutor learned that Leodegreco, who is the son of the late Cebu vice governor Greg Sanchez, first got married to Virginia Magnase-Sanchez on June 3, 1999 well before his marriage to Castro in 2015.
Carillo said that a copy of an order from the Regional Trial Court Branch 29 in Toledo City dated Oct. 19, 2015 that dismissed the petition to declare the marriage between Leodegreco and Virginia null and void, thereby, making their marriage still valid and subsisting. This makes Virginia as the offended spouse.
In her defense, Gregory, Leodegreco’s rumored live-in girlfriend, said that she was living with Leodegreco even before the latter’s marriage to Castro in 2015. Leodegreco and Castro separated more than a month after they got married.
Castro, in filing the complaint, said that the respondents cohabited somewhere in Guadalupe as husband and wife after she and Leodegreco separated, thus, the complaint for concubinage.
Carillo, however, said that it is the wife of the first marriage who is the proper party to file a complaint for concubinage and not the complainant.
He said that “concubinage is a crime categorized in the Revised Penal Code as a private offense. The law provides for a specific procedure in its prosecution.”
“Now the law specifically provides that in the prosecution of adultery and concubinage, the person who can legally file the complaint should be the offended spouse and nobody else,” read Carillo’s comment referring to Virginia, and citing a Supreme Court ruling on the issue.
“For failure to comply with Article 344 of the Revised Penal Code, which is mandatory and exclusive, the undersigned submit that the instant complaint cannot be given due course,” said Carillo.