Gov’t asks high court to reverse CA ruling in Barrameda murder case

Ruby Rose Barrameda

The government has asked the Supreme Court to reverse a recent Court of Appeals ruling that ordered the Ruby Rose Barrameda murder case raffled off to a new judge.

In a 26-page petition for review filed on Nov. 11, the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) asked the high tribunal to intervene in the high-profile case by reviewing and setting aside a portion of the appellate court’s Feb. 18 amended decision and Sept. 19 resolution.

In particular, it wanted the high court to reverse the lower court’s ruling in its Feb. 18 amended decision which ordered the transfer of the case from Malabon Regional Trial Court Branch 170 Judge Zaldy Docena to another judge to “obviate any claim of bias and prejudice.”

This was despite the appellate court’s observation that Docena, contrary to the claims of Manuel Jimenez Jr.—Barrameda’s father-in-law and one of those accused of having ordered her death—did not commit “grave abuse of discretion” when he allowed another accused, Manuel Montero, to turn state witness.

In its Sept. 19 resolution, the Court of Appeals upheld its earlier ruling to have the case reraffled off to a new judge.

In its petition filed on Monday, the OSG put forward several arguments. For one, it said that a “mere claim of bias and prejudice [was] not sufficient to divest a judge of his authority” to hear a pending case.

It cited as an example the case of Philippine Commercial International Bank v Dy Hong Pi in which the high court ruled that the “mere imputation of bias or partiality” was “not enough ground for inhibition.”

“Bias and prejudice are required to be proven,” the OSG said, adding that in Docena’s case, the biased acts which Jimenez complained of such as the judge’s alleged “nonobservance of judicious courtesy,” his apparent haste in having Montero take the witness stand, the postponement of the Sept. 29, 2011, hearing because one of the prosecutors was in a legal forum and his supposedly “uncontrolled temperament” and “unexplained attitude” toward a defense counsel, among others, were “not indicative of prejudice or bias” nor were they proven to be “constitutive of bias and partiality.”

The OSG also debunked Jimenez’s claim that Docena was biased in the prosecution’s favor since he and Head Prosecutor Theodore Villanueva were classmates at the Ateneo Law School.

“A trial judge, appellate justice or member of this court who is or was a member of a college fraternity, a university alumni association, a sociocivic association like Jaycees or Rotary … is not expected to automatically inhibit himself or herself from acting whenever a case involving a member of his or her group happens to come before him or her for action,” it quoted a previous court ruling as saying.

It also said that a judge’s “nonfavorable action against the defense [was] not indicative of bias and prejudice against the petitioner.”

The OSG noted that Jimenez had accused the judge of partiality after the latter reversed a March 19, 2010, order, thus allowing Montero to turn state witness. But according to the OSG, Docena had “thoroughly explained the factual and legal justifications for his reversal of the order.”

It also argued that an administrative case filed by another accused against Docena was “not a ground to disqualify him” from hearing the case. It said that if every party “apparently aggrieved” would be allowed to stop the proceedings or demand the immediate inhibition of the judge “on the basis alone of his being so charged,” many cases would be left pending or there may not be enough judges to handle them.

Barrameda’s body was found in the waters off Navotas City, encased in cement inside a drum that had been placed inside a steel box, in 2009. She was battling her husband, Manuel Jimenez III, for custody of their two daughters when she disappeared in 2007.