Court sends two men to prison for drug raps

The Regional Trial Court yesterday convicted two men, one of them was meted with life imprisonment for selling shabu and the other with 15-year imprisonment for possession of marijuana, but acquitted three others of drug charges.

Judge Gabriel Ingels found 38-year-old Jimmy Ferolino, of barangay Duljo-Fatima in Cebu City, guilty of selling 15 packs of shabu during a police buy-bust in barangay Calajoan, Minglanilla more than two years ago.

The court also found guilty 19-year-old Jay Jasper Abella, of barangay Pakigne in Minglanilla, of smoking and possessing handrolled marijuana cigarettes when caught by the police last April 9.

Ferolino defended by contending that the arresting policemen just framed him up allegedly on the proddings of a woman who had been harboring ill-feeling against him due to his failure to lend her money sometime in 2004.

Ferolino denied selling 15 packs of shabu to a poseur buyer, insisting that the policemen just barged into the house of her in-laws in Minglanilla while he was watching a TV show and drinking beer shortly before midnight of June 21, 2005.

The RTC rejected Ferolino’s defense because the testimonies of his witnesses controverted his own. His witness said the policemen arrived at the house then knocked at the door, and it was Ferolino’s common-law wife who opened it. This contradicted Ferolino’s statement that the policemen barged into the house without knocking at the door.

Judge Ingles, in convicting Ferolino to the crime, ordered him to pay P500,000 fine in addition to life imprisonment for violating section 5 of Article 2 of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act.

On the part of Abella, he denied the policemen confiscated marijuana cigarettes from him when they arrested him for smoking marijuana cigarets but he failed to prove that the policemen had ill-motive in arresting him, so the court to give more credence to the policemen’s testimonies.

Meanwhile, Judge Ingles acquitted three men of charges that they were sniffing shabu inside a house in barangay Tejero on April 3, 2004.

This after the prosecution failed to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt of the defendants: Bermund Amper, 24, of Poblacion, Consolacion; Roy Flores, 48, of Bogo City; and Ricardo Belcina, 54, of Sangi, Lapulapu City.

The police testified that they went to the scene after receiving a call from a private person about a group of men sniffing shabu inside the house. They arrested the three men and seized from them a plastic pack of shabu and some drug paraphernalia.

Judge Ingles said the incriminating evidence could not be used as evidence against the three accused because the policemen entered the house without a warrant, thus the evidences are considered fruits of illegal warrantless search and seizure. — Rene U. Borromeo/RAE