Ecleo’s arrest warrants ‘in order’

CEBU CITY — The Court of Appeals has junked the petition of cult leader Ruben Ecleo Jr. to invalidate the two warrants of arrest two Regional Trial Court judges earlier had issued for him.

Ecleo’s petition was wanting of merit and "must fail," said Associate Justice Godardo Jacinto in a 13-page decision, concurred by Associate Justices Renato Dacudao and Danilo Pine.

Ecleo alleged that Judge Galicano Arriesgado, as former executive judge, committed grave abuse of discretion when he issued the arrest warrant barely over an hour after the case for parricide was filed against him on April 24, 2002.

Ecleo also alleged that Judge Olegario Sarmiento, after the case was raffled off to his sala, also committed the same offense when he upheld the allegedly invalid warrant of Arriesgado by issuing an alias warrant.

He argued that Arriesgado hastily issued the warrant without personally examining and evaluating the sufficiency of evidence submitted by the prosecution in determining probable cause.

But Arriesgado countered that he personally reviewed the prosecutor’s initial findings of probable cause as well as the affidavits of witnesses.

The appellate court, in upholding the arrest warrants, said that nowhere in the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure is it required that a judge must first issue an order stating his finding of probable cause before he issues an arrest warrant.

The Court of Appeals earlier had denied Ecleo’s petition for a temporary restraining order or writ of preliminary injunction.

Ecleo is facing trial for the killing of his wife, Alona Bacolod, whose body was found in a black garbage bag dumped in a ravine in Dalaguete town in January last year, several days after she was reported missing. — Freeman News Service