Dacers push bid vs Ping at SC

MANILA, Philippines -  The daughters of slain publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer asked the Supreme Court (SC) yesterday to reconsider its junking of their bid to have Sen. Panfilo Lacson held liable for the killing of their father and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000.

In a 36-page motion for reconsideration, the Dacer sisters appealed to the high court to consider their petition seeking a reversal of a Court of Appeals (CA) ruling last February clearing Lacson in the double murder case.

Through lawyer Demetrio Custodio, the sisters – Carina, Sabina Reyes, Emily Hungerford and Amparo Henson – asked the SC to consider their appeal, citing the reported loss of interest by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) in appealing the CA ruling.

“The problem, however, is that the OSG, whose bounden duty it was to represent the state and the offended party in the case against respondent (Lacson), had shirked that obligation,” the Dacer motion read.

“Suddenly the OSG turned its back on its earlier vigorous defense of the trial court’s finding of probable cause against respondent and deliberately failed to appeal the Court of Appeals’ decision on the flimsy excuse that it was ‘afraid that (the appeal) will suffer the same fate as what happened in the Court of Appeals’,” the Dacers said.

In its ruling last Feb. 14, the third division of the high court held that petitioners lacked legal standing to question the CA ruling because they are no longer a party-in-interest in the case.

But the Dacers argued that they have the legal personality to seek the reinstatement of the case against Lacson because they are entitled to civil indemnity for the killing of their father.

“With all due respect to the Honorable Court, petitioners have a material interest in the reinstatement of the criminal case against respondent, with which the civil action for the recovery of civil indemnity for the death of their father was deemed instituted,” they explained.

The OSG and the DOJ earlier agreed to re-investigate the double murder case in order to determine its real mastermind.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima earlier explained that Lacson is not yet covered by the double jeopardy rule since he was not arraigned in court prior to the CA ruling because he was in hiding for a year.

The reinvestigation is expected to start soon, with the arrival last Sunday of former police officer Michael Ray Aquino, the highest official indicted in the case.