THE Court of Appeals has junked the bid of businessman Cedric Lee questioning its October 2022 decision affirming the ruling of the Taguig City Regional Trial Court Branch 53 which denied his motion to dismiss the case for “serious illegal detention with ransom” filed by comedian and television host Ferdinand “Vhong’ Navarro.
In a three-page resolution dated Aug.31, the appellate court’s Former Seventeenth Division denied Lee’s motion for reconsideration for lack of merit.
Lee, who is out on a P500,000 bail, said the first element of the case — the offender is a private individual — should have been expressly alleged in the information and that, as a result of the prosecution’s failure to do so, the information is “defective” and “does not exist in contemplation of law.”
However, the appellate court’s ruling penned by Associate Justice Angelene Mary Quimpo-Sale stressed that Lee’s motion partakes of the nature of a motion to quash on the ground that the facts charged do not constitute an offense, adding that when such a motion is filed challenging the validity and sufficiency of information, and the defect may be cured by amendment, courts must deny it and order the prosecution to file a piece of amended information.
“Generally, a defect pertaining to the failure of an information to charge facts constituting an offense is one that may be corrected by an amendment. In such instances, courts are mandated not to automatically quash the information, rather, it should grant the prosecution the opportunity to cure the defect through an amendment,” the CA added.
The appellate court further explained that even the Supreme Court, in a number of cases — like the People v John Galicia, People v Ustadz Ibrahim Ali and Excel Gurro v People — “sustained the conviction of the accused for the crime of kidnapping under Article 267 of the Revised Penal Code even if there was no allegation in the information that the offender is a private individual.”
Concurring with the ruling were Associate Justices Maria Elisa Sempio-Diy and Rex Bernando Pascual.
In dismissing Lee’s motion, the appellate court, in its October 2022 ruling, held that the Taguig RTC did not abuse its discretion or acted in excess of its jurisdiction to warrant an annulment of its order denying the motion.
Lee and his group were accused of holding Navarro captive and inflicting serious physical injuries against him on January 22, 2014.
Lee allegedly beat up Navarro and threatened to kill the actor if he failed to pay them P2 million.
Navarro said he agreed to pay half of the amount in exchange for his freedom.
Lee’s co-accused in the case were his sister Bernice, mixed martial arts expert Simoen Raz, Jose Paolo Gregorio Calma, Ferdinand Guerrero, Sajed Fernandez Abuhijleh and model Deniece Cornejo.
Cornejo alleged that Navarro raped her inside her condominium unit in Taguig’s Bonifacio Global City on the said date.
Last March, the Supreme Court dismissed the rape and acts of lasciviousness charges filed by Cornejo against Navarro, saying the Department of Justice did not commit grave abuse of discretion when it earlier ruled to dismiss the cases before the CA revived it last year and ordered the Taguig City prosecutors office to file the cases.
In dismissing the charges, the High Court explained that Cornejo’s inconsistent statements were not trivial or inconsequential.
The SC stressed that in the interest of justice and fair play Cornejo should not be permitted to “materially change” her theory in two previous complaints in a “deliberate attempt” to rectify weaknesses of her theories or add new material allegations.
