A KIDAPAWAN court has acquitted 43 farmers charged with assaulting policemen in a protest rally denouncing the government’s alleged lack of assistance that happened in 2016 amid a severe drought in the province.
A clash between the protesters and the policemen led to the death of at least two farmers and the wounding of 116 others.
Judge Rebecca Elena De Leon of the Municipal Trial Court in Cities of the 12th Judicial Region granted the demurrer to evidence of the accused, effectively dismissing the case.
A demurrer is a pleading seeking a case’s dismissal because of weak prosecution evidence and without the defense presenting its own.
The granting of such a plea is tantamount to an acquittal, while its denial means that the trial will proceed.
In her decision, De Leon said the prosecution failed to identify the persons who assaulted the police officers.
“Here, while there is no dispute that the complaining law enforcers were hit with stone thrown at them by the protesters on April 1, 2016, the prosecution has utterly failed to prove the identity of the persons responsible for the acts complained,” the court’s 21-page decision promulgated on May 22, 2023 said.
“It is worth noting that despite the number of witnesses presented, the testimonies which have been obtained from them all paint the same picture as to how the accused were apprehended and arrested – such as – there was an altercation between the officers and protesters, stones were thrown at them from the mob of a thousand protesters, and finally, the officers arrested the protesters without certainty as to whether the stone-throwing was definitively committed by the ones arrested,” the court said.
“Neither do any of the officers’ testimonies pointed to a specific accused as the same person who threw a stone towards members of the Philippine National Police,” it stressed.
The court also noted that other than the officers’ accounts on what transpired that day, no evidence was presented by the prosecution.
Likewise, it rejected the prosecution’s argument that the accused were in conspiracy with each other in throwing stones at the police officers, adding that it deserves “scant attention” considering its failure to present evidence to back up its assertion.
“The party alleging conspiracy must present evidence of the overt act of the accused in connection to the alleged conspiracy but which the prosecution has miserably failed to do in the instant case,” the court said.
To recall, the accused were among the thousands of farmers and lumads who blocked the Kidapawan Highway in April 2016 in protest of the government’s alleged lack of assistance due to families affected by the severe drought that hit the province that year.
The protest turned violent, leading to a clash between the farmers and the policemen deployed to the area.
The police pointed to 61 individuals responsible for the attack but arrested only 43.
