MPD cop in torture video loses CA plea

The Court of Appeals has dismissed a petition of a Manila policeman who questioned a local court for proceeding with his trial on charges that he and some fellow officers tortured a crime suspect inside their precinct.

The alleged acts of torture were caught on video that went viral in March 2010.

In a decision dated Aug. 24, the CA’s 16th division said SPO3 Joaquin M. de Guzman’s petition was “denied due course and dismissed for both its infirmity and utter lack of merit.”

De Guzman went to the CA to question the Sept. 12, 2011, decision of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch to hear the charges against him and six other policemen for allegedly torturing Darius Evangelista on March 5, 2010, inside the Meisic station of the Manila Police District.

The Manila RTC also denied De Guzman’s motion for reconsideration in March this year. He later claimed that the local court committed grave abuse of discretion “amounting to excess or lack of jurisdiction for finding probable cause and issuing a warrant of arrest on him.”

De Guzman maintained that he was not positively identified as one of the police officers who tortured Evangelista based on the evidence presented.

But the CA decision penned by Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier said the policeman’s petition was “utterly devoid of merit.”

Javier noted that the policeman did not attach relevant portions of the record for it to determine the factual issues needed to determine whether the evidence against him was sufficient for him to be charged.

The CA also said De Guzman did not include in his petition the evidence that the prosecution had used in his case, including the affidavits of the other coaccused policemen.

“So how can we pass upon their contents and probative weight? At any rate, petitioner’s alibi and denial are matters of defense which should be threshed out during the trial proper,” the appellate court said. Christine O. Avendaño