Strange twist in Ecleo murder puzzles clan

While nobody was looking, the parricide trial of cult leader Ruben Ecleo Jr. took a mysterious turn – one that not only breaks court rules but also raises doubts if justice will prevail.

Ecleo, supreme master of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association, is indicted for murdering his wife Alona Bacolod in Jan. 2002. Last April Judge Anacleto Caminade, RTC Branch 11 in Cebu City, granted him bail in the nonbailable heinous offense, for treatment of hypertension.

But that’s not the caper. On May 7, from the mountain town of Barili 60 kms from Cebu City, came a ruling from another court. Judge Idelfonso Suerte, RTC Branch 60, sentenced Cedric Devinadera to prison for four to eight years, for accessory to murder. The conviction stemmed from Devinadera’s confession that Alona’s brother Ben Bacolod had strangled her while he served as lookout. The supposed slaying took place in the vicinity of Mantalongon, Dalaguete and Dumanjug, towns within Judge Suerte’s jurisdiction.

The Bacolod family was stunned. They never knew that Ben and his pal Devinadera had ever been charged. Equally uninformed was NBI-Central Visayas chief Reynaldo Esmeralda, although Devinadera was in his custody from Dec. 2003 to Apr. 2004, two weeks before the sentencing. Their attention was on the trial in Cebu City, where other members of the Bacolod clan also were massacred days after Alona’s mutilated body was found in a trashbag.

Ricky Bacolod, another brother of Alona, surmised that a cousin might have been paid off to file the case in Barili. Ecleo’s defense has always been that the Bacolods had done Alona in, not him.

The cousin has refused to leave Dinagat Isle, Surigao, headquarters of Ecleo’s cult and where the Ecleos hold various positions in government. The Bacolods had once been cult members in Cebu, but left after a tiff with Ecleo. Alona was killed soon afterwards. Authorities arrested Ecleo at the Dinagat palace, but not before cult members attacked them with guns and machetes. While police were gathering evidence on Alona’s murder, still more cult members attacked the Bacolod home in Cebu.

Ricky’s conjectures notwithstanding, it is puzzling that a trial in Barili would proceed without informing the Bacolods or the NBI. More than that, that a trial of a side case would proceed at all.

Under court rules, any side case is supposed to be subsumed by the main case. And a court that’s hearing the main case shall take over the side case as well. In a libel suit, the one for civil damages should be taken over by the court that’s trying the criminal case. All in the interest of swift and clear justice. More so in a murder case.

In the Ecleo case, Devinadera should have undergone preliminary investigation by the Cebu city prosecutor. If probable cause is determined, only then would he be charged with accessory to murder. And the case against Ecleo would have been dropped. Or the Bacolods would have challenged Devinadera’s confession. As it is, NBI’s Esmeralda is saying that Devinadera’s story is "impossible and uncorroborated." At any rate, the judge in Cebu would have the last say.

Of course, the judge in Barili, along with the prosecutor there perhaps, would insist on jurisdiction. And it is from such technicalities, not the spirit of the law, that justice often is blunted.

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Judges and prosecutors are lawyers. And the law, it is often said, is too serious a business to be left alone to lawyers. For there’s always the possibility that they’ll twist and turn the law to suit their ends, and never run out of arguments for it.

Consider the act of Manguindanao Rep. Didagen Dilangalen, a senatorial candidate of the opposition KNP – and a lawyer.

Dilangalen charged into the Cotabato city hall Wednesday night and ordered his men to seize three ballot boxes, calling it "citizen’s arrest". The boxes came from Notre Dame Village’s polling precincts 317-A, 317-C and 318-C. In it were ballots and election returns – proofs, Dilangalen claimed, that he and his party mates were winning the election, contrary to trending by Namfrel and media quick counts.

Dilangalen said he would submit the boxes for "public judgment". Only by authority of the Comelec central office in Manila may the boxes be released from "citizens’ custody".

"I am a lawyer," he justified the virtual snatching of ballot boxes akin to what communist rebels and Moro separatists do in their controlled areas, "I know what I’m doing."

Yes, of course he does. He’s a lawyer. He can scan all his law books and discover a section somewhere to buttress his act.

But what if a nonlawyer, also in the name of citizens’ arrest, were to similarly grab three ballot boxes from the board of canvassers? And what if that nonlawyer is with Dilangalen’s opponent’s camp? Would he not find another passage in the law books – aha, the Omnibus Election Code – that prohibits the snatching of boxes and prescribes a 12-year prison term for the perpetrator? Would he not demand that the Comelec perpetually bar the culprit from voting and being voted upon? And will he not cry that the snatching was an act of election terrorism?

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Take another lawyer, for that matter, the KNP spokesman who said that the Namfrel and media quick counts made it appear that Fernando Poe Jr. was trailing behind Gloria Arroyo, when their own count showed otherwise. "They’re conditioning the public mind to accept an Arroyo victory," he shouted, "they must stop this farce."

In those same quick counts, lawyers Juan Ponce Enrile and Aquilino Pimentel Jr. of the KNP were also leading the senatorial race. Can the lawyer-spokesman please tell the two to renounce their leads because they, too, are part of the farce?

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Catch Linawin Natin, Mondays at 11 p.m., on IBC-13.

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