The Court of Appeals has upheld its 2021 decision denying the petition of former senator Leila de Lima to include former Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) acting chief Rafael Ragos and several high profile Bilibid inmates as accused in the illegal drug cases she is facing before the Muntinlupa city regional trial court.
In its decision promulgated on July 20, the appellate court’s former Fifteenth Division held that De Lima failed to raise new arguments that would warrant the reversal of its October 28, 2021 decision denying her plea.
The appellate court in its assailed ruling also held that it is within the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice whom to charge and prosecute in a criminal case.
“Again, the prosecution of crimes pertains to the Executive Branch of government whose principal duty is to see to it that our laws are faithfully executed. Courts are not empowered to substitute their own judgment for that of the executive branch,” the ruling penned by Associate Justice Isabel Paredes said.
The CA stressed that it cannot compel state prosecutors to file a case against a person when the evidence presented to him is insufficient to warrant the filing of a case before the trial court.
Likewise, the appellate court said that state prosecutors committed no abuse of discretion when it decided to exclude Ragos as one of the respondents in the drug case against De Lima.
“Section 14, Rule 110 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure grants the prosecutor the discretion to amend, in form or in substance the complaint or information without leave of court at any time before the accused enters his plea,” the CA explained.
“Public prosecutors are solely responsible for the determination of the amount of evidence sufficient to establish probable cause to justify the filing of the appropriate criminal charges against a respondent. Theirs is also the quasi-judicial discretion to determine whether or not criminal cases should be filed in court,” it added.
To recall, De Lima elevated the issue to the CA after the Muntinlupa RTC Branches 204 and 205 junked her plea to reinstall Ragos as one of her co-accused.
The prosecution accused the former senator, her aide Ronnie Dayan and Ragos of allegedly soliciting and extorting money from high-profile inmates who were supposedly behind the illegal drug operations in the NBP when De Lima was still the DOJ chief during the Aquino administration.
Ragos claimed he delivered P10 million in drug money from the narcotics trade at the national penitentiary to de Lima in 2012.
He had said that the drug money would allegedly be used to fund De Lima’s senatorial run in the 2016 elections.
The DOJ later amended the complaint and excluded Ragos from the case, who later turned into a prosecution witness.
However, Ragos earlier this year made a turn-around and retracted his allegations linking De Lima to the drug trade. He accused former DOJ chief Vitaliano Aguirre II of supposedly coercing him to implicate the former senator, a charge that Aguirre had denied.
Dayan has also recanted his testimony made before the House of Representatives in 2016 linking De Lima to the narcotics trade.
De Lima also appealed to the CA to reverse the May 2019 order of Muntinlupa RTC Branch 205 junking her plea to include Bilibid inmates and prosecution witnesses Herbert Coanggo, Engelberto Duranto, Vicente Sy, Jojo Baligad, Peter Co, Noel Martinez, Reynante Diaz, Jaime Patcho, German Agojo, Hans Antonio Tan, Joel Capones, Rodolfo Magleo and Froilan Trestiza as co-accused in the case.
De Lima is facing two drug charges — one before Branch 204, and another before Branch 205 — after the court junked another case last year.
De Lima told the SC the inmates were not ordinary witnesses but rather high-profile and dangerous ones who have allegedly continued their illegal drugs trade even while in detention.
She also argued that high-profile convicts or those convicted of heinous crimes are barred from becoming state witnesses.
But the CA responded that the matter rests ultimately on the discretion of the state prosecutor, and eventually, the DOJ chief.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla recently said they would continue to prosecute the cases against de Lima, leaving her fate to the Muntinlupa court.
