The Court of Appeals dismissed the bid of one of the accused in the death of Ruby Rose Barrameda to drop him as one of the accused.
In a 16-page decision, the appeals court 4th Division through Associate Justice Eduardo Peralta Jr. said petitioner, fishing magnate Lope Jimenez failed to prove that the DOJ through Justice Secretary Leila de Lima committed grave abuse of discretion when she approved the prosecutors’ recommendation to include him as one of the accused for murder.
The body of Ruby Rose Barrameda, sister of former actress/model Rochelle Barrameda, was retrieved from the waters off Navotas in 2009 inside a rectangular rusty steel casing. She disappeared in 2007.
Her body was recovered after witness Manuel Montero surrendered and confessed his participation to the crime. Montero was able to pinpoint the exact location of the body in Navotas. He also implicated Lope Jimenez and brother Manuel Jimenez Jr. as those behind Barrameda’s death
The DOJ approved the filing of the case in court. Lope Jimenez filed a motion for reconsideration which was denied by de Lima. He then, took his case to the Court of Appeals.
The appeals court, in a decision dated Sept. 21 but released to the public Monday, however said “the courts of law are precluded from disturbing the findings of public prosecutors and the DOJ unless such findings are tainted with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.”
In looking at the case, the appeals court said “no wanton exercise of the faculty conferred upon the Secretary of Justice can be ascribed against public respondent when she acted through her impugned resolutions.”
The DOJ charged Lope Jimenez and brother Manuel of murder based on Montero’s testimony.
The appeals court said the testimony of Montero was boosted by the discovery of the body at the exact location he pinpointed.
The appeals court added that other issues raised by Jimenez should be ventilated at a full blown trial.
“After all, appreciation of evidence is beyond the office of a petition [before the Court of Appeals] which is confined to the question of grave abuse of discretion,” the appeals court said.
Montero already recanted his testimony in 2013. But the appeals court opted not to discuss the net effect of Montero’s “legal somersault” and focused on the evaluating the allegations of Jimenez against the DOJ resolution that charged him with murder.
Concurring in the decision are Associate Justices Noel G. Tijam and Francisco P. Acosta.