MANILA, Philippines – Former Mindoro Occidental governor and congressman Jose Villarosa yesterday filed criminal and administrative charges against a Quezon City Regional Trial Court judge, accusing her of wrongfully convicting him for the murder of the two sons of a political rival in 1997.

In a complaint before the Department of Justice, Villarosa accused Judge Ma. Theresa de la Torre-Yadao of unjustly and deliberately disregarding the testimony and evidence he presented in his defense.

He said his suit was meant to be a lesson to all judges to be fair to the accused who are innocent until proven guilty.

“In this case, our innocence was thrown out the window. I hope this won’t be repeated. The wrongfully accused are pitiful,” Villarosa told reporters.

Yadao, who presides over the Quezon City RTC Branch 81, was not immediately available for comment.

Her staff said the judge left her office after presiding over the hearings of several criminal and civil cases yesterday.

They declined to comment on Villarosa’s filing of a case against Yadao.

“We have yet to see a copy of that complaint. We don’t have any idea about its merits,” said Oliver Mateo, Yadao’s legal researcher.

Not beyond reasonable doubt

In his complaint, Villarosa said that Yadao, because of her “manifest partiality,” committed the crime of knowingly rendering unjust judgment defined and penalized under Article 204 of the Revised Penal Code.

He said the judge “calculatingly ignored the fundamental and most basic precept that to justify conviction, guilt must be proven beyond reasonable doubt.”

Villarosa, with lawyer Raymund Fortun, first paid a courtesy call on Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez before filing the case. Villarosa and Gonzalez both served in the 10th Congress. Occidental Mindoro is now represented by Villarosa’s wife, Ma. Amelita, who is closely allied with President Macapagal-Arroyo.

In February 2006, Yadao found Villarosa and six others guilty of the murders of Michael and Paul Quintos, the sons of Ricardo Quintos, Villarosa’s political rival who later succeeded him as Mindoro Occidental representative.

The accused were given the death sentence, later commuted to life imprisonment after the government implemented a moratorium on capital punishment.

Last March, the Court of Appeals ruled that Villarosa and three of his co-accused were innocent of the crime, saying the evidence failed to establish their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. But the appellate court convicted the three remaining convicts.

Villarosa, who had been imprisoned at the New Bilibid Prisons for more than two years and was hospitalized reportedly for cancer for part of this period, was ordered released.

‘Full of conjectures’

“The decision was unfair to everyone, it was full of conjectures,” Villarosa said, adding that he was concerned about two co-accused who remain behind bars.

Villarosa’s main accusation against Yadao pertained to prosecution evidence pointing to his presence at a meeting in a warehouse in Sablayan, Mindoro Occidental on Oct. 7, 1997 to plot the murder with the other co-accused, as related by state witness Eduardo Hermoso.

Villarosa claimed that he was able to prove that on that day, he was at a meeting in a Quezon City hotel from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., after which he left for the Batasang Pambansa where he remained until 7 p.m.

He said this was disregarded by Yadao who “sweepingly concluded” that considering the proximity between Manila and Mindoro and the availability of faster modes of transportation such as helicopters and light planes, his presence in Mindoro in the afternoon of Oct. 7, 1997 and at the Batasan early in the evening of the same day was “within the realm of possibility.”

Villarosa noted that the appellate court had found Yadao’s reasoning ridiculous.

He said Yadao blindly relied on Hermoso’s extrajudicial confession and willfully disregarded the fact that the prosecution failed to present any other evidence to prove his participation in the conspiracy or even just his presence in the October meeting.

Rational grounds

Another indicator that Yadao “knowingly” rendered an unjust judgment was her insistence in establishing a connection between Villarosa and Hermoso and another accused, Manolito Matricio, by means of check booklets, he said.

Villarosa said he admitted to having issued checks to the two but there was never any testimony presented by the prosecution to show that the payment was made for pursuing a plan to kill the victims or in consideration of the killing.

He said the money given to the families of the suspects was merely for financial assistance during the course of the trial, as may be gleaned from the dates of the checks.

Circumstantial evidence

The former congressman said Yadao also “capitalized” on at least six pieces of circumstantial evidence to convict him, including Ricardo Quintos’ testimony that the killings were politically motivated.

Villarosa said he no longer treats Quintos as a political threat; he also denied any land dispute between their families.

“All circumstantial evidence must be based upon rational grounds of everyday logic. In this case, Judge Yadao deliberately turned the tide of logic to favor the prosecution,” he said. With a report from Marlon Ramos