Leviste joins 75 other Makati inmates in detention cell

Former Batangas governor Jose Antonio Leviste, who was arrested for the murder of his company’s executive officer Rafael de las Alas last Wednesday, was admitted yesterday to the Makati City Jail and tagged as the prison’s 517th male detainee.

Leviste, estranged husband of former senator Loren Legarda, was detained in a regular cell along with 75 other inmates facing various criminal charges.

Jail warden Superintendent Delvic Oreiro assured the family of the victim that Leviste, 67, is not being given special treatment.

He said Leviste can wear his own choice of shirts inside his cell but all detainees are required to wear the city jail’s yellow prisoner’s uniform whenever they accept visitors.

Meanwhile, Judge Elmo Alameda of the Makati City Regional Trial Court has set the arraignment of Leviste for the charge of murder on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. after the judge upgraded the homicide charges filed by the police against the former governor.

Leviste will be presented in court to enter his plea on the charge of murder for the killing of de las Alas.

The accused claimed that he killed De las Alas in self-defense at his office on the 9th floor of the LPL Tower building on Legaspi St., Legaspi Village in Makati City last Jan. 12.

Leviste was initially charged with homicide but the victim’s family moved for a reinvestigation of the case, which eventually resulted in the filing of murder charges.

According to an autopsy report by Dr. Raquel del Rosario-Fortun made on the request of the de las Alas family, the victim was killed by a series of fatal shots in the head and on the neck that ended in a shot on forehead.

"I think the shot to the forehead was the last. It was close-ranged. The shot to the neck was the deadliest," the University of the Philippines College of Medicine pathologist said.

Senior State Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco had criticized police investigators for the sloppy probe and recommended that the homicide case against Leviste be upgraded to murder based on the reinvestigation.

Velasco pointed out several "very, very visible elements of tampering at the crime scene," which prompted his team to recommend that Leviste, who confessed to killing his aide in self-defense, be charged with murder.

Lawyer Henry Capela, one of Leviste’s counsels, is still hoping that Alameda will inhibit himself from the case.

Capela said the defense lawyers are also waiting for the decision of the Court of Appeals (CA) on their petition for certiorari and prohibition, which seeks to nullify the lower court’s earlier order for a reinvestigation that led to the upgrading of the original homicide charge to murder, a non-bailable offense.

The CA ordered yesterday Leviste to justify within five days whether his petition for a temporary restraining order (TRO) has not yet been mooted by the order of Alameda upgrading from homicide to murder the charges filed against him by the Department of Justice.

Alameda also subsequently ordered Leviste’s arrest.

"In view of the television and news reports that public respondent Judge Elmo M. Alameda, presiding judge of the RTC, Branch 150, Makati City, has issued a warrant of arrest against petition Jose Antonio C. Leviste following the admission of the amended information for murder against him and that the said petitioner was subsequently arrested and is now detained in jail, which events may render the petition moot and academic, petitioner is hereby directed to file comment thereon within five days from receipt of notice hereof," the CA said.

In a petition before the CA, Leviste’s lawyer Manuel Singson asked the CA to issue a TRO on the proceedings for the murder charges filed against Leviste by the DOJ.

Singson also asked the CA to allow Leviste’s arraignment for a lesser charge of homicide.

He said Velasco and Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez have unduly prejudged the case against Leviste by making public pronouncements that the proper charge should have been murder instead of homicide.

"For against all norms of fair play, respondents (DOJ officials) have become both his judge and prosecutor at the same time. Worse, they are riding in an express train running at full speed, to trample upon his constitutional rights. To be sure, it is a basic component of the right to due process of law that any proceedings against a person must be conducted by a fair and impartial judge, one who hears before he condemns, one who renders judgment only after trial," Singson said.

Capela said Leviste’s defense team is studying other legal remedies like filing a petition for bail or a motion for judicial determination of probable cause.

"However, these legal remedies should take the back seat for now because making use of them will defeat the purpose of our petition for inhibition," he said. "We’re hoping that he’ll be prudent enough to inhibit himself (Alameda)," he added, believing that everything was done in such haste that his client’s rights were trampled on.

"It was too scripted. I hope they won’t take it against us but that’s how we feel. We feel we have valid claims and arguments against (the court’s) orders but we were not given due process," Capela stressed.

Alameda will hear the defense’s motion for inhibition on Monday at 8:30 a.m. where Leviste’s lawyers will present their oral arguments in court. – With Jose Rodel Clapano, Evelyn Macairan