MANILA, Philippines ? (UPDATE) An accused and key witness in the murders of a publicist and his driver will be dropped from the list of the respondents, a local court ruled.

Former police Superintendent Glen Dumlao however will remain a witness based on the resolution by the Department of Justice in 2001, which Judge Myra Garcia-Fernandez of Branch 18 of the Manila regional trial court affirmed.

Rogelio Agoot, one of Dumlao's lawyers, said the ruling was equivalent to an acquittal of his client.

Morel Callueng and Cesar Brillantes, also counsels for Dumlao, said that with the former police official?s exclusion from the list of the accused, he would be summoned by the government as an "ordinary witness" for the prosecution.
(A state witness is usually one of the suspects or the accused who has agreed to testify for the prosecution for a lesser charge.)

However, Dumlao will continue to be under the protective custody of the National Bureau of Investigation unless he decides he no longer needs it, his lawyers said.

Dumlao is expected to testify on the killings of Salvador ?Bubby? Dacer, a public relations practitioner, and Emmanuel Corbito in 2000.

He would affirm that his first affidavit which he filed before the DoJ was executed in 2001when he implicated Lacson whom he referred to with the code name ?71.?

Dumlao also tagged fellow accused and another former police officer, Michael Ray Aquino, as the one who ordered him to kill Dacer.

The Supreme Court affirmed the validity of the DoJ resolution in 2005.

Dumlao was a member of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, in 2000, then under Lacson.

Dumlao and another member of the PAOCTF, former superintendent Cezar Mancao II agreed to testify for the prosecution on the Dacer-Corbito murders and the alleged involvement of Lacson and former president Joseph Estrada in the twin slays shortly before they were extradited from the United States earlier this year.

Estrada and Lacson have since denied the allegations.