QC court convicts 5 UP frat men

A Quezon City Regional Trial Court sentenced yesterday to a jail term of 20 to 40 years five UP Scintilla Juris fraternity men for the murder of Sigma Rhoan Dennis Venturina during an outbreak of fraternity-related violence in the state university’s Diliman campus in 1994.

RTC Branch 219 Judge Jose Catral also ordered Robert Michael Alvir, Danilo Feliciano, Christopher Soliva, Julius Victor Medalla and Warren Zingapan, to pay the victim’s heirs a total of P5, 312,000 in damages and indemnities.

Mendoza said he spared the five fraternity men from capital punishment and only imposed the penalty of reclusion perpetua because the prosecution failed to establish evident premeditation and abuse of superior strength. The judge only found treachery in the attack on Venturina, a public administration student who was graduating with honors.

The judge acquitted Scintillans Reynaldo Ablanida, Carlo Jolette Fajardo, Gilbert Magpantay, George Morano and Raymund Narag because of the failure of the prosecution to establish their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. One other accused, Benedict Guerrero, had gone into hiding. He has yet to be arraigned.

The court also found Alvir, Feliciano, Soliva, Medalla and Zingapan guilty of attempted murder for the injuries suffered by Venturina’s fraternity brothers Arnel Fortes, Mervin Natalicio, Leandro Lachica, Cristobal Gaston and Cesar Mangrobang Jr.

Mendoza’s verdict came in sharp contrast to an administrative ruling rendered years earlier by the UP Student Disciplinary Tribunal, which exonerated all of the accused.

"Wow," Zingapan remarked in surprise when he heard the guilty verdict. Medalla broke into tears, muttering that he had been denied justice. "I have two children who will suffer for a crime I did not commit," he said between sobs.

The Scintilla Juris fraternity men were all in tears when they were ushered into the court staff room adjacent to the court gallery so that the court interpreter could help the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) guards identify who among them would be brought to the National Penitentiary in Muntinlupa.

Mendoza, one of only three magistrates in the regional trial court trying heinous crimes, looked away while court interpreter Ma. Eliza Nubla read his 83-page ruling inside the tightly-packed courtroom at the city’s Justice Hall.

"I couldn’t look at them because I pitied them," he later said in an interview. "But the law is clear. I have a legal duty to fulfill and I have to convict those who the law says are guilty beyond reasonable doubt."

He told reporters that Zingapan had earlier copped the first place in the civil engineering board examinations. Another accused, Magpantay, whom he acquitted, placed third in another engineering board examination.

Another suspect who was acquitted, Fajardo, is now a fourth year student at the UP College of Law. Narag, a cum laude graduate of the UP National College of Public Administration, was also acquitted, but not without suffering the ordeal of five years in the Quezon City Jail.

The mixed verdict sent a wave of mixed emotions rippling through the packed courtroom. Venturina’s mother Myrna rushed out of the courtroom in tears, disappointed that the judge acquitted five of the accused. "She was terribly upset," said a colleague in the anti-crime watchdog Crusade Against Violence (CAV).

A sizeable crowd, mostly friends and relatives of the accused, and members of the Sigma Rho fraternity, had milled outside the courtroom. As word of the verdict reached the crowd, a group of young women became hysterical. "We prayed that all of them should be acquitted," one of them tearfully said. "Why did the judge convict the others?"

About a dozen Armalite-wielding BJMP security men in black overalls cleared a path for the five convicts as they were led out of the courtroom.