THE Sandiganbayan has thrown out motions for reconsideration filed by former Iloilo town officials and private contractors to the denial of their requests for leave of court to file demurrer to evidence concerning two pending graft charges against them.
Sustaining the stand of the prosecution, the anti-graft court’s Seventh Division held that the only recourse left for accused former Sta. Barbara, Iloilo mayor Isabelo Maquino and his co-defendants is to proceed to trial after their motions for leave to file demurrer to evidence were denied.
This was the guidance of the Supreme Court in its 2021 ruling in the case of Jalandoni vs. Office of the Ombudsman, which declared that such denial of leave of court is not subject to review by certiorari.
“To allow a motion for reconsideration from the denial of a motion for leave to file demurrer to evidence will only defeat the purpose of the rules pertaining thereto …to prevent stalling the proceedings,” the Sandiganbayan declared.
Maquino, Municipal Bids and Awards Committee members Lyndofer Beup, Noel Jaspe, and Negenia Araneta, and private defendants Raymund Tabuga of Topmost Development and Marketing Corp (TMDC) and Felix Gurrea of F. Gurrea Construction Inc. (FGCI) were charged in 2017 with two counts of graft filed by the Office of the Ombudsman.
The cases involved allegations that the municipal government officials conspired with the contractors to rig the bidding of projects to ensure that they ended up winning five public works contracts between them.
Prosecutors said FGCI was awarded two contracts while its “sister company,” TDMC, won three.
They said the scheme worked through the withdrawal by either of the two contractors of its bid in municipal infrastructure projects resulting in the automatic award of the contract to the other.
In their separate motions for reconsideration, Gurrera and Tabuga argued that when they asserted the insufficiency of the government evidence to constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they had already complied with the requirement for a specific ground for seeking leave of court.
Tabuga added that if he were to enumerate the specific grounds, it would make filing the separate demurrer to evidence a “surplusage.”
Maquino and the rest of the former LGU officials added that the attached demurrer to evidence in their motion for leave of court should be taken as proof that their request is not intended to delay proceedings.
The court clarified that it cannot consider the demurrer to evidence at the same time as the defendant’s motion for leave of court.
“The court may not consider the accused’s demurrer attached to his motion for leave to file the same. For the court to do so would be tantamount to it taking his demurrer as one filed without leave of court, subject to the appurtenant consequences,” it pointed out.
A denial of a demurrer to evidence filed without leave of court would mean the case would be decided based on the prosecution’s evidence alone.
This is because in filing the demurrer to evidence without prior leave of court, an accused would be deemed to have waived the right to present evidence in his or her defense.
