THE COURT of Appeals (CA) has backed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to charge businessman Lope Jimenez with murder over the gruesome death of Ruby Rose Barrameda—his nephew’s estranged wife—in 2007.
In a Sept. 21 ruling released last week, the appellate court’s Fourth Division dismissed for lack of merit Jimenez’s petition for certiorari in which he claimed that Justice Secretary Leila de Lima erred in 2010 when she included him in the list of those to be indicted for Barrameda’s killing.
“In the case before us, no wanton exercise of the faculty conferred upon the secretary of justice can be ascribed against [her] when she acted through her impugned resolutions,” the 16-page decision written by Justice Eduardo Peralta Jr. stated.
The other division members, Justices Noel Tijam and Francisco Acosta, concurred with him.
Aside from Jimenez, the DOJ had also charged his brother Manuel Jr., his nephew and Barrameda’s estranged husband Manuel III, Eric Fernandez, Lennard Descalzo, Robert Ponce and Manuel Montero who turned state witness only to retract his testimony later.
Jimenez, a fishing magnate, denied being involved in any conspiracy to murder Barrameda and described Montero’s confession as coming from a “polluted source,” considering that Montero eventually recanted his sworn statement linking him and the other suspects to Barrameda’s killing. Montero also revealed the location of the drum where the victim’s body had been sealed in cement before it was thrown into the waters off Navotas City.
“A sufficient ground was established to engender a well-founded belief that the persons mentioned by Montero, including petitioner, were indeed probably guilty of the crime imputed against them…. A trial is intended precisely for the reception of prosecution evidence in support of the charge,” the court ruled.
Thus, the court said that Jimenez’s claims—that he did not have a motive to kill Barrameda, that he could not have taken part in any conspiracy since he was at odds with his brother and nephew; and that Montero was only getting back at him for firing him and failing to extort money from him—
were matters that should be ventilated in court.
Barrameda disappeared in March 2007 in the middle of a dispute with her estranged husband over the custody of their daughters. According to Montero, she was strangled and her body hidden in a drum into which concrete was poured. The drum was then placed inside a steel container that was loaded on a tug boat which dumped it about 15 minutes away from the shore.
The police, acting on information from Montero, retrieved the container in June 2009, ending the over two-year search for the victim.