The Regional Trial Court yesterday sentenced a woman to 15-year imprisonment and ordered her to pay P300,000 fine for keeping 10 packs of shabu at her house in barangay Labangon, but it acquitted two drug suspects for lack of sufficient evidences.
RTC-branch 58 Judge Gabriel Ingles ruled that 36-year-old Emelinda Luciño was guilty beyond reasonable doubt for violating Section 11 of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act.
Ingles however acquitted and ordered released from jail Rosella Sabal, 28, single and a native from Talibon, Bohol and Alex Abellar, 45, married and a fish vendor of barangay Pasil.
In the case of Luciño, the police on September 3, 2004 armed with a search warrant raided and searched her house on A. Lopez Street in Labangon. They found 10 small plastic packs of shabu and arrested her.
The court rejected the arguments of Luciño that the policemen “planted” the packs of shabu that they claimed were recovered from her house. She even said that the raiding policemen have an ill-motive against her but she failed to prove this defense, and caused her conviction of the crime.
In the case of Abellar, the police contended that they arrested him while in the act of selling five small packs of shabu to a police poseur buyer on March 3, 2007 at the corner of Katipunan and A. Lopez Streets.
Abellar insisted that those who arrested him — PO3 Cesar Pandong, PO2 Andrew Ilagan and PO1 Albert Luardo — allegedly tried to extort P50,000 from him after he was arrested, but he refused.
The court later found that the supposed buy-bust operation was never consummated because before the accused could hand over the packs of shabu to Pandong, the poseur-buyer, the latter quickly frisked him, instead of receiving first the shabu in exchange of the marked money. The police failed to refute this claim.
“The testimonies of the defense witnesses, whom the prosecution failed to discredit, succeeded in creating in the mind of this court a doubt as regards the guilt of the accused,” Ingles ruled.
In the case of Sabal, the court was unconvinced that Sabal was arrested while in the act of examining the two packs of shabu in the presence of policemen who were responding to a complaint about video carrera operations. — Rene U. Borromeo/RAE