2 justices: Evidence vs Jinggoy strong

MANILA, Philippines — The prosecution’s evidence against former senator Jinggoy Estrada is strong enough to warrant his continued detention for a plunder case, according to two justices of the Sandiganbayan dissenting the court decision to grant him bail.

Associate Justice Zaldy Trespeses said in his six-page dissenting opinion that the court should not have granted Estrada’s motion outright but instead should have conducted another bail hearing to allow the prosecution to present its evidence against the new argument raised by Estrada in his motion.

“I find that notwithstanding the (Supreme Court’s) Arroyo ruling, Estrada should be denied bail considering that the bail hearings yielded strong evidence of his guilty for the crime of plunder,” Trespeses said.

“Granting bail to Estrada on the strength of a mere motion is procedurally infirm, considering the prior, well-reasoned Resolution dated 7 January 2016 of the Court denying him bail after the conduct of bail hearings,” the magistrate added.

Trespeses said that in more than a year of hearing Estrada’s original petition for bail, sufficient evidence was presented by the prosecution to show that he was the “hub” or at the center of the alleged misuse of his millions of pesos worth of Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or pork barrel, when he was a senator.

Trespeses noted that among the prosecution’s evidence presented during the bail hearings were several letters personally signed by Estrada endorsing the fake foundations allegedly owned by Napoles as the beneficiaries of his PDAF. 

Trespeses also cited the reproduced checks connecting Estrada to a certain Juan Ng. 

During the hearings of Estrada’s original bail petition, the prosecution said the bank account under the name Juan Ng is just a dummy account of Estrada, where his supposed kickbacks from the scam was allegedly deposited.

“In the final analysis, it was Estrada’s endorsement that set into motion the subject transactions which, using Napoles’ scheme/facilities, resulted in amassing ill-gotten wealth for his benefit,” Trespeses said.

“This voluminous evidence still stands in support of the prosecution’s position that the evidence of guilt of accused Estrada is strong,” he added.

The Sandiganbayan Fifth Division in a 215-page resolution promulgated on Jan. 7, 2016 denied Estrada and Janet Lim-Napoles’ petitions for bail.

Estrada appealed the ruling through a motion for reconsideration but the same was denied on May 11, 2016.

At the time, the court was composed of Associate Justices Roland Jurado, Alexander Gesmundo and Ma. Theresa Dolores Gomez-Estoesta.

The Fifth Division’s composition has since changed. Its regular members now are Associate Justices Rafael Lagos, Ma. Theresa Mendoza-Arcega and Reynaldo Cruz.

A reliable Sandiganbayan source had earlier told The STAR that two additional magistrates from other divisions were designated to participate in the voting on Estrada’s motion after Lagos, Arcega and Cruz failed to reach a unanimous decision.

Under the Revised Internal Rules of the Sandiganbayan, a “unanimous vote of the three justices” is required when granting or denying a motion, otherwise members from other court divisions would have to be designated by the Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice to participate in the voting. 

Trespeses, a senior member of the Sandiganbayan Seventh Division, and Associate Justice Lorifel Pahimna, a junior member of the Second Division, participated in the voting.

Pahimna was an appointee of President Duterte.

In a 15-page resolution promulgated on Friday, Arcega, Cruz and Pahimna voted in favor of Estrada’s bail while Trespeses and Division chairman Lagos dissented.

In the resolution penned by Arcega, the majority said that although the prosecution’s evidence “show that there were glaring irregularities in the disbursement of accused Estrada’s PDAF allocation and that he received a sum of money from his participation in these irregularities, there is no strong evidence to show that he is the main plunderer” in the case.

The anti-graft court cited the Supreme Court (SC)’s July 2016 ruling on the plunder case of former president and incumbent Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The case was in connection with the alleged misuse of the P366-million intelligence fund of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

In its ruling, the SC reversed the Sandiganbayan’s decision and granted Arroyo’s demurrer to evidence which prayed for the dismissal of the case on the ground of the prosecution’s failure to identify the main plunderer. The ruling was upheld by the SC last April.

“The allegation of a main plunderer is now considered as integral elements in charging the crime of plunder. Thus, this fact must be properly alleged in the [case] information,” the Fifth Division’s ruling read.

In his one-page dissenting opinion, Lagos likewise maintained that the court had earlier found “strong evidence” that Estrada amassed more than P50 million worth of kickbacks from the scam – the threshold amount for illegally amassed public fund for a crime to be considered as plunder.

Lagos said the “relevant proof” as to who is the main plunderer in the case is only required if there was such allegation in the case information.

“It seems that the requirement that relevant proof as to who the mastermind is only becomes material in identifying the ‘main plunderer’ if the alleged mastermind is characterized as such,” Lagos said.