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By Jomar Canlas Reporter
The Court of Appeals revived the
murder charge against dismissed Mayor Prospero Antonio Esquivel of
Jaen, Nueva Ecija, who was involved in a bloody shootout during the
recent midterm elections.
In a two-page Resolution of the
Former CA 8th Division dated July 25, 2007, penned by Associate
Justice Jose Catral Mendoza, the appellate court ordered Gapan
Regional Trial Court Presiding Judge Rodolfo Beltran to continue
hearing the murder charges against Esquivel after being tagged as
the mastermind in the killing of Barangay Chairman Ricardo Velarde
on June 1, 1994.
The CA junked the motion for
reconsideration filed by Esquivel and set aside his arguments
raising technicalities with the CA decision against him on April 23,
2007.
The appellate court also pointed
out that the court already passed upon the issues raised by Esquivel
and no substantial ground could warrant the reversal of their
earlier ruling.
“After carefully considering
the grounds raised in the subject motion, which were mostly
technicalities, we find that the said reasons and the arguments in
support hereof have been amply treated, discussed and passed upon in
the subject decision. The additional arguments proffered therein
constituted no cogent or compelling reason to modify, much less
reverse, it,” the Resolution states.
Besides Justice Mendoza, other
Magistrates who concurred in the ruling are Justices Andres Reyes
Jr. and Ramon Bato.
With the closure of this CA
ruling, the lower court may now issue a warrant of arrest against
the sacked Mayor. The Office of the Ombudsman recently dismissed
Esquivel for illegally sacking the local water board officials.
In the April 23 decision, the CA
said that the order of Judge Beltran “denying the issuance of a
warrant of arrest against respondent Prospero Antonio Esquivel for
want of probable cause and excluding him from the Information for
Murder are hereby Reversed and Set Aside.”
The appellate court has given
credence to the petition of the wife of the victim, Rosalinda Vda.
de Velarde, which argued that there was grave abuse of discretion
committed by Beltran for junking the Ex Parte Motion to Admit
Amended Information submitted by the prosecution wherein Esquivel
was named as an addition respondent to the case.
The widow also questioned the
decision of Beltran to junk the motion of the prosecution to issue
an arrest warrant against Esquivel by not giving the prosecutors a
chance to present evidence against the mayor.
The Esquivel case has undergone
three preliminary investigations wherein in the first PI he was
exonerated for the murder charges while the two other
investigations, probable cause were already seen against him after
the admission made by accused Rufino Domingo and Edgardo Santos.
The CA pointed out that the
recommendation made by the prosecution in finding probable cause
against Esquivel cannot be set aside by the judge, with more reason
that other accused are implicating him as the mastermind in the said
crime.
It stressed that the case should
proceed to the court for a full-blown trial and the judge committed
grave abuse in setting aside the evidence of the prosecution.
The Appellate Court added that
the very act of Beltran junking the Amended Information against
Esquivel would mean that it has no jurisdiction to deny the motion
which prays for the issuance of warrant of arrest against him.
In view of this, the CA order the
lower court to resolve the case with dispatch and act on the ex
parte motion to admit amended information and give the prosecution a
chance to submit countervailing evidence.
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