2 judges in hot water over Espinosa killing

Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. GRIG MONTEGRANDE/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The Supreme Court will investigate two Eastern Visayas judges for the killing of Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. one for failing to act on his request for a jail transfer and the other for the search warrant issued to the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG).

In an en banc resolution on Friday, the high court ordered the Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) to investigate Basey, Samar Presiding Judge Tarcelo Sabarre Jr. who gave the CIDG two search warrants to enter the cells of Espinosa and Rolando Yap at the subprovincial jail on Nov. 4.

Necessity of warrants

The tribunal wanted to determine the necessity of issuing the search warrants “against persons already in custody in a government detention facility, including the existence of any compelling reasons by the Basey court.”

Motion to transfer detention

The court also asked the OCA to probe Baybay, Leyte Presiding Judge Carlos Arguelles for his failure to act on the motion of Espinosa

to transfer to another detention facility.

The magistrates noted that Espinosa filed his motion as early as Oct. 6 and that Arguelles had even inspected his jail cell on Oct. 26 and

yet the motion was never acted on even though it normally took a day to act on such motion.

Suspicious circumstances

Espinosa was killed, along with his coaccused Raul Yap, by CIDG operatives in what they claimed was a shootout on Nov. 5 or just hours after they got the search warrants from Sabarre.

Bothered by the suspicious circumstances surrounding the killings, the high court acted motu proprio and ordered the OCA to determine if Sabarre and Arguelles’ actions “had any possible connection between the failure to resolve the deceased Espinosa Sr.’s motion for transfer of detention, the application and service of search warrants, the procedure for service of such warrants, and the ensuing deaths of Espinosa Sr. and Yap.”

The high court gave the OCA five days to start the investigation and submit its recommendation after five days. Both deadlines are nonextendible, which showed the urgency attached by the court to the case.

Testimonies in the Senate investigation on Espinoa’s killing indicated that Espinosa and Yap were killed by the CIDG in a rubout. But President Duterte has backed the CIDG’s version that the mayor was killed in a shootout.