No payoff in dismissal of raps vs 2 aggie execs

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — A regional trial court judge in Tacurong City vehemently denied having been paid off to dismiss the murder charges against two ranking agriculture officials in the region in connection with the killing of columnist Marlene Esperat.

"I strongly deny such baseless and unfounded allegation that there was a financial consideration," said RTC Branch 20 Judge Francis Palmones.

He was referring to his order dismissing the charges against Osmena Montaner and Estrella Sabay, finance and accounting officers, respectively, of the Department of Agriculture (DA) in Region 12.

Esperat, who wrote a hard-hitting column in the local weekly newspaper Midland Review, was gunned down inside her home in Tacurong City last March 29 (Maundy Thursday).

Lawyer Nena Santos, legal counsel of the Esperat family, said she was surprised when Palmones hurriedly ordered last Aug. 31 the dismissal of the charges against the two DA officials, who were tagged as the alleged brains of the celebrated murder.

"We are just wondering why he made the decision without conducting a hearing first and surprisingly, it was prepared on his last day as officer-in-charge of Branch 20," she said.

Santos also complained that Palmones did not entertain their pleadings for the four other accused to be heard first since they have been languishing in jail compared to the two DA officials who were never arrested until their arrest warrants were lifted.

Palmones, however, insisted that he only did what he was supposed to do.

"I should be the one to resolve this Esperat case because it all started during my incumbency as OIC presiding judge of RTC Branch 20," he said.

Palmones said government and private prosecutors need not worry because they still have other legal remedies such as filing a motion for reconsideration or petition for certiorari with the Court of Appeals.

In his four-page Aug. 31 order, Palmones said he dismissed the charges against Montaner and Sabay due to the "prosecution’s failure to adduce additional evidence as directed."

Palmones said the single most important evidence of the prosecution linking Montaner and Sabay to the killing was the extra-judicial confession of Army Sgt. Rowie Barua, who alleged that the two DA officials ordered him to contact the gunman.

With the not-guilty plea which Barua entered when he was arraigned last May 9, Palmones said, "He disowned his own confession and the prosecution was left with nothing against accused Montaner and Sabay, except the discarded confession."

He said he ruled last July 25 that the not-guilty plea of Barua had made his extra-judicial confession implicating Montaner and Sabay "inconsistent."

"Consequently, said extra-judicial confession becomes doubtful pursuant to Section 6(a), Rule 112 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure, in case of doubt on the existence of probable cause," he said.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is studying the possible filing of an administrative case against Palmones for what it described as his "irregular decision."

"I have ordered state prosecutor Leo Dacera to determine if there is valid ground for the filing of an administrative case against Pamones," Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales said in a phone interview.

Gonzales said he suspects that there was "something fishy" in Palmones’ ruling because the judge was supposed to act on a Department of Justice motion seeking his relief from the Esperat murder case since he was about to be assigned back to Kidapawan City. <