Woman gets life for selling shabu

A woman was yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment after the Regional Trial Court found her guilty of selling two packs of shabu more than a year ago in Talisay City.

RTC-branch 58 Judge Gabriel Ingles meted the life sentence to Arlene Pepito who he also ordered to pay P500,000 fine-all for violation of Section 5, article II of Republic Act 9165, also known as the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act.

"The corpus delicti has been sufficiently established by the testimony of the prosecution's witnesses," Ingles said.

The law defines corpus delicti as the "body of the offense or the essence of the crime", which explains that the crime must be proven by presumptive but conclusive evidence.

During the course of the case, the court did not admit the physical evidence against Pepito because of the delay of the prosecution's formal offer of evidence but this did not save her from conviction.

Judge Ingles, in a four-page decision, ruled that the non-admission of the evidences was not fatal to the case because the evidences were merely corroborative to the testimonies of the arresting officers.

Members of the Talisay police station testified that, at 8:45 p.m. on September 30, 2004, they conducted a buy bust operation in sitio Tunga, barangay Tangke using a civilian poseur buyer.

Team leader SPO4 Reynaldo Vitualia testified that Pepito sold two packs of shabu to the poseur buyer who paid her with a P200 marked money.

Vitualia said the police recovered the marked money from Pepito's wallet. In her own testimony, she subsequently admitted the marked money but denied she sold the shabu when the police arrested her.

Pepito claimed she was in the area waiting for others who would be playing mahjong with her when three men, she later realized were policemen, approached and invited her to go with them to the police station where they got the P200 from her wallet.

Judge Ingles, however, said the admission of the accused further supported the testimony of the arresting officers.

Pepito vainly tried to extricate herself when she admitted she was previously arrested for selling shabu but she was eventually reformed. - Fred P. Languido