Manila, Philippines - Government prosecutors asked the Court of Appeals (CA) yesterday to reconsider its ruling last month approving a plea by the prime suspect in the killing of Ruby Rose Barrameda to transfer the murder trial to another judge in the Malabon City regional trial court.
In a 25-page motion filed through the Office of the Solicitor General, the Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the CA’s 10th division to reverse its May 22 decision granting petition of Barrameda’s father-in-law, Manuel Jimenez Jr., and ordering the re-raffling of the case from Malabon RTC Branch 170 Judge Zaldy Docena, who had refused to inhibit himself from the case.
The DOJ insisted there was no valid reason to compel Docena to inhibit from the case, saying Jimenez’s conclusion that Docena had been partial was triggered by the judge’s reversal of a previous order denying the discharge of Montero.
“Records will bear out that petitioner was not deprived of his day in court. Petitioner was able to file his comments on and objection to the motions filed by the prosecution,” it stressed.
The DOJ also contested the ruling of the CA that junked the bid of prosecutors to discharge self-confessed killer Manuel Montero, a former employee of the Jimenez family, as an accused to become a state witness in the case.
“The brutal killing of Ruby Rose Barrameda was not meant to be discovered. It is only the testimony of Montero, who earlier came forward and confessed to the crime, which provided direct evidence to the conspiracy and identities of the perpertrators,” Solicitor General Francis Jardeleza said.
“In plain words, if Montero does not testify in this case as a state witness, there will be no direct testimony linking the other accused to the crime and those who are truly guilty for the gruesome death of Ruby Rose may be allowed to go free,” he added.
Jardeleza said Montero’s admission to the DOJ’s witness protection program bound the court and entitled him to immunity from criminal prosecution for the offense or offenses in which his testimony will be used.
The DOJ insisted that Montero – who led authorities to Barrameda’s body, placed in a steel drum and encased in cement before being thrown into Manila Bay – is the only person who could link Jimenez to the crime.
Montero is being held at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City.
Jimenez alleged that the head of the prosecution panel – Senior State Prosecutor Theodore Villanueva – was Docena’s former classmate at the Ateneo Law School.