FILM director Jade Francis Castro and three others were released Monday night from detention after a Quezon province court dismissed the destructive arson case filed against them for their alleged involvement in the burning of a modern jeepney owned by the Gumaca Transport Service Cooperative last January 31 in Catanauan town.
In a 16-page ruling promulgated last March 11, Catanauan, Quezon Regional Trial Court Branch 96 Presiding Judge Julius Francis Galvez partially granted the motion to quash the information filed against Castro and his co-accused — Ernesto Orcine. Noel Mariano, and Dominic Ramos — by the Catanauan police.
“After the evaluation of the parties’ respective arguments, this Court resolves that the police personnel of the Municipal Police Station of Catanauan, Quezon did not validly arrest the four accused through a hot pursuit operation pursuant to Section 5 (b), Rule 113 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedures,” the court’s decision said.
Also known as “hot pursuit,” Section 5 (b) requires that the offender has just committed an offense, and the arresting peace officer or private person has personal knowledge of facts indicating that the person to be arrested has committed it.
However, the RTC said after perusal of the circumstances relating to the initial police investigation and dragnet operation with the report from the Mulanay police, it perceives that the Catanauan police “have no probable cause based on personal knowledge or even on reasonable suspicion” to proceed with their follow-up operation on February 1 at the Micasa Resort in Barangay Mutanyog, Mulanay town where the four accused were apprehended.
“The arresting and investigating officers merely received from the eyewitnesses the information about the physical descriptions of four males who were armed with small firearms and the means as to how those males burned and destroyed the minibus.
However, those eyewitnesses did not provide them with sufficient information on these additional yet significant circumstances, namely, how the four males accused effectuated their escape right after they committed the crime, the means of transportation that those males used in fleeing from the place of incident, and the direction where they proceeded to when they fled,” the court explained.
The court said the report provided by the Mulanay police to their counterparts in Catanauan does not suggest any suspicious or incriminating actuation of the four accused at the Micasa Resort for them to be suspected as the perpetrators being referred to by the witnesses.
“Moreover, the foregoing report does not in any way provide sufficient connections with the incident and physical descriptions of the perpetrators as given by the eyewitnesses.
Besides, the eyewitnesses did not mention in their affidavits that the perpetrators were using a Mitsubishi Mirage as an escape vehicle from the crime scene, and that those perpetrators fled to the directions going to Mulanay, Quezon. In fact, they did not see how those perpetrators fled from the crime scene,” the court added.
The court also said the police did not submit any evidence to prove the existence of their dragnet operations.
But the court said the ruling does not foreclose the case build-up of the Catanauan police to determine their involvement in the case.
“This ruling cannot be interpreted as a resolution of this case on the merits which can be further strengthened by the Municipal Police Station Catanauan and the prosecution through a regular preliminary investigation. An order sustaining the motion to quash is not barred to another prosecution for the same offense unless the motion was based on the grounds specified in Section 3(g) and (i) of this Rule,” it added.
Castro’s lawyer, Carmela Pena, said in a television interview that his client and his three companions had already gone home after the court ordered the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology to release them from detention.
Pena said Castro and his companions can still be sued without violating the rule on double jeopardy since they were not arraigned on the case.