A scavenger at the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill who was arrested by policemen last year for selling drugs was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Regional Trial Court yesterday.
RTC judge Gabriel Ingles also ordered 37-year-old Christine Giba of sitio White Road, barangay Inayawan, to pay the government P500,000 for violating section 5, Article II of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act.
Policemen from the Pardo police station arrested Giba after she sold a small pack of shabu to a poseur-buyer during a buy-bust operation conducted in front of her house on September 27, 2006.
But Giba denied the charges and told the court she was only framed by her arresting officers, although she failed to support her claim.
Giba said while she was resting inside her house, the policemen arrived, broke into her house, handcuffed her then brought her to the police station. She also said the policemen demanded P15,000 from her.
But Ingles said Giba’s witness, Abigail Calvo, failed to corroborate the claim of the accused that the policemen forcibly entered her house and arrested her, instead Calvo testified that she heard somebody knocking on the door.
According to the testimony of the policemen, after the team arrived the place their poseur-buyer knocked on the door of Giba’s house and told her he wanted to buy a pack of shabu.
PO2 Joel Lacson accompanied the poseur-buyer and pretended to be a drug user himself, it was he who quickly arrested Giba after she handed the illegal drugs in exchange for the P100 buy-bust money.
“The defense failed to establish by clear and convincing evidence any improper motive on the part of the arresting officers or that the officers merely wanted to extort money from the accused,” Ingles said.
Meanwhile, another woman from sitio Bato, barangay Ermita, was also sentenced to 15 years in jail after she was found with nine small packs of shabu.
Policemen reported that they were about to respond to an alarm when they saw the accused Angelita Rosales examining the packs of shabu.
But the accused countered in court that while she was inside her house, somebody called her from outside and when she opened the door, two men entered and frisked her but recovered nothing.
Ingles said the defense of the accused is purely an alibi because she failed to prove that her arresting officers or any of her neighbors had a grudge against her. – Rene U. Borromeo/BRP