Supreme Court affirms conviction of 'Abadilla 5'

MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court has affirmed the conviction of five men who were found guilty for the 1996 killing of police colonel Rolando Abadilla, chief of the defunct Metropolitan Command Intelligence and Security Group of the police.

In a 75-page decision promulgated on Tuesday, the High Court upheld the ruling of the Court of Appeals on April 1, 2008 that lowered the sentence from death penalty to life imprisonment against the five accused dubbed as “Abadilla Five” – Senior Police Officer 2 Cesar Fortuna, Rameses de Jesus Calma, Leonardo Lumanog, Joel de Jesus and Augusto Santos.

The SC said the CA was correct in lowering the sentence due to repeal of the death penalty law.

Voting 10-4, the SC dismissed the petition of the convicted killers seeking reversal of the CA decision that affirmed the guilty verdict handed down by Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 103 in 1999.

“Perusing the CA decision, we hold that it cannot be deemed constitutionally infirm, as it clearly stated the facts and law on which the ruling was based, and while it did not specifically address each and every assigned error raised by appellants, it cannot be said that the appellants were left in the dark as to how the CA reached its ruling affirming the trial court’s judgment of conviction,” explained the SC ruling penned by Associate Justice Martin Villarama.

The SC, however, modified the dama­ges awarded to the heirs of Abadilla.

The Court increased from P50,000 to P75,000 the indemnity damages for Abadilla’s death while the amount of moral damages awarded to his heirs is reduced from P500,000 to P75,000 and the exemplary damages from P500,000 to P30,000.

Abadilla, according to witnesses’ accounts, was shot dead by the accused on June 13, 1996 while his car was stuck in a traffic along Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City. The SC held that the CA and the RTC were correct in giving full credence to the testimony of security guard Freddie Alejo, who witnessed the whole shooting incident.

It further ruled that the CA correctly held that the negative result of ballistic exams was inconclusive for there was no showing that the firearms supposedly found in appellants’ possession were the same ones used in the ambush-slay of Abadilla. The fact that the ballistic exam revealed that the empty shells and slug were fired from another firearm does not disprove appellants’ guilt, as it was possible that different firearms were used in shooting Abadilla.

It added that a ballistic exam was dispensable in this case because even if another weapon was in fact actually used in killing the victim, still, appellants Fortuna and Lumanog cannot escape criminal liability because they were positively identified by eyewitness Alejo as the ones who shot Abadilla to death.