CA junks Mancao plea in Dacer-Corbito case

MANILA, Philippines - The Court of Appeals (CA) has rejected the appeal of fugitive former police senior superintendent Cezar Mancao to be cleared in the killing of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in 2000.

In a six-page decision released last Friday, the appellate court’s Ninth Division dismissed Mancao’s petition assailing an earlier ruling of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 48 denying his plea for immediate verdict on the case through demurrer to evidence.

The demurrer to evidence is usually used by an accused to hasten criminal proceedings by asking the court to declare the prosecution’s evidence as insufficient.

The defense will no longer present counter-evidence to expedite the judgment of the case.  

The CA ruling, penned by Associate Justice Eduardo Peralta, noted that the Supreme Court had ruled that the denial of the demurrer to evidence presented by the prosecution “is sufficient to convince the court that the defendant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt rests entirely within the discretion of the trial court.”

Associate Justices Magdangal de Leon and Stephen Cruz concurred with the ruling.

The Department of Justice had accepted Mancao as state witness after he implicated former senator and now rehabilitation czar Panfilo Lacson, former police superintendent Glenn Dumlao and former police intelligence officer senior superintendent Michael Ray Aquino in the Dacer-Corbito case.

Lacson, tagged as one of the alleged masterminds in the twin killings, had been cleared by the CA. The CA ruling was upheld by the high court.

Mancao escaped from the custody of the National Bureau of Investigation last year after the court junked his request to be allowed to serve as a state witness, which led to his removal from the Witness Protection Program of the government.

Aquino, on the other hand, had been ordered released from jail after the Manila RTC Branch 18 dismissed the case against him.

The court also discharged Dumlao as a state witness, making Mancao the only principal accused in the double murder case.