Prosecution panel junks psych exam for slay suspects

CEBU - The counsel of the prosecution in the gruesome killing of a Nursing graduate and her cousin in Talisay City last month asked the court to deny the motion of the accused Richard Gudelosao and Joseph Roy Cellar to undergo psychiatric examination.

Talisay City prosecutor Marshall Rubia and prosecutors Albert Hontanosas and Allan Legaspi yesterday filed their opposition to the plan letting Gudelosao and Cellar undergo psychiatric exam.

Lawyer Salvador Solima, counsel of the accused, filed a motion earlier saying that the “accused were not themselves” when they allegedly killed and chopped up the bodies of the two women.

But prosecution lawyers said that Gudelosao, in the sworn statement he executed last July 28, had admitted to the crime and in fact narrated on how he and Cellar killed the victims Eva Mae Peligro and her cousin Gwendolyn Balaste.

The prosecution lawyers said that the admission was “clear and categorical” and that there was no sign that the accused were mentally derailed or disturbed.

The lawyers said that the move is only merely to delay the proceedings and that there was also no admission that the accused were under the influence of drugs at the time they committed the crime.

“There is even no evidence adduced by the accused to support their claim that indeed they were under the influence of drugs at the time they committed the crime,” the comment read.

Peligro, the fiancée of Gudelosao’s US-based brother Felix, and Balasta were said to be beaten up first and strangled to death before chopped up.

Their body parts were dumped in Camp 7, Minglanilla town and Uling in Naga City. — Jasmin R. Uy/MEEV (THE FREEMAN)