Barramedas get Mother’s Day gift

It’s the best Mother’s Day gift any mother could get.

After almost five years of suffering the injustice done to her daughter, Ciony Barrameda and her family now feel that they are a step closer to getting justice for the murdered Ruby Rose.

The Office of the President has denied a petition for review that Ruby Rose’s estranged husband, Manuel Jimenez III, had filed in 2010.

The petition stemmed from Justice Secretary Leila de Lima’s order to file parricide charges against Jimenez III, which reaffirmed a March 2010 order of her predecessor, Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera.

In a decision issued on May 2, the Office of the President found Jimenez III’s appeal for exclusion from the list of accused “bereft of merit,” citing, among others, the admissibility as evidence of witness Manuel Montero’s statement on Jimenez III’s alleged participation in Ruby Rose’s killing.

Existence of motive

The decision, signed by  Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr., also said that Jimenez III “had every motive to participate in the murder of his wife,” citing among other things, Jimenez III’s custody battle with Ruby Rose over their two children.

“Taken together, all these circumstances bolster the existence of motive behind the murder, and support the indictment for parricide,” said the decision, a copy of which was obtained by the Inquirer.

On Jimenez III’s allegation that De Lima and Devanadera were biased and partial when they ordered that the charges of parricide be filed against him, the Office of the President said that the respondent-appellant had “failed to sufficiently substantiate” this.

Aquino weighs in

It said a “simple statement” from De Lima that she was “going to review the instant case when asked by the media” was “not sufficient” to show bias and partiality.

The grisly murder of Ruby Rose has stirred anticrime advocates and other victims of heinous crimes, including President Benigno Aquino III who referred to it in one of his recent speeches attacking the state of the judiciary.

“Many cases indicate the sad state of our justice system,” he said in a speech at  Centro Escolar University last April.

“There’s the injunction that is serving as obstacle to use as a state witness of Manuel Montero, who became the key to making answerable those who were behind the killing of Ruby Rose Barrameda, who was found, let me just remind you, in cement inside a drum,” he said.

Missing for 2 years

On June 10, 2009, acting on a tip from a suspect, police fished out of the waters off Navotas a steel drum, inside which was found encased in solid concrete the body of Ruby Rose, 27, who had been missing for more than two years. It was later  determined that Ruby Rose had been strangled before being stuffed inside the drum and covered with concrete.

The discovery of Ruby Rose’s body led to several members of her husband’s family being charged for her murder, along with several others.

Montero, a former employee of the Jimenez family who had led the authorities to the submerged drum and who offered to turn state witness, said Ruby Rose had been killed in a warehouse at the Navotas pier owned by her husband’s family on orders of the Jimenezes, which the latter denied.

In a resolution dated March 1, 2010, then Justice Secretary  Devanadera ordered the filing of parricide charges against Jimenez III, but withdrew the murder charges against Jimenez’s uncle, Lope Jimenez.

Lope had successfully argued that he and his brother, Manuel  Jimenez  Jr., the father of Jimenez III, had been estranged from each other for  some time and could not have conspired to commit the grisly murder.

Hearings suspended

Last February, the murder case filed by the parents of Ruby Rose against her husband was suspended after the Court of Appeals ordered the hearings suspended indefinitely while it resolved a petition for inhibition filed against the Malabon judge hearing the case by Ruby Rose’s father-in-law, fishing tycoon Jimenez Jr., one of the accused.

For the case in the Malabon court to proceed, the appellate court has to rule on Jimenez Jr.’s petition claiming that Judge Zaldy Docena be inhibited from hearing the case because of his alleged bias in favor of the Barrameda family and for granting the petition of Montero to be discharged as a state witness.