Ex-councilor can’t use ‘minor age’ as defense in gun case

The Sandiganbayan headquarters in Quezon City, a busy place nowadays with scores of graft cases pending before it. —GRIG MONTEGRANDE

MANILA — The Sandiganbayan has denied the motion of former San Juan City councilor Joseph Christopher Torralba invoking his young age in asking not to be tried for technical malversation for the alleged misuse of calamity funds to buy firearms.

In a six-page resolution dated Jan. 24, the court’s Sixth Division rejected Torralba’s argument that he should not be subjected to formal court proceedings because he was only 17 years old in 2008, when the city council allegedly authorized then mayor and now-senator Joseph Victor Ejercito to use the calamity funds.

The court said Torralba could no longer be considered a child for  purpose of applying for the benefits of the Juvenile Justice Welfare Act.

It said he was already 23 years old when the Office of the Ombudsman made the “initial contact” with him on Dec. 11, 2014, when he received the order to file a counter-affidavit before the prosecutor.

The court no longer applied Section 6 of the JJWA, which provides that children under 18 may be subjected to “diversion” as an alternative to court proceedings.

“The provision no longer applies to him but the regular rules of criminal procedure,” read the court, penned by Justice Rodolfo Ponferrada with the concurrence of Justices Oscar Herrera Jr. and Karl Miranda.

Torralba was one of the councilors who were accused of approving the ordinance allowing the city government, then led by Ejercito, to use its calamity funds to buy firearms even as the city was not placed under a state of calamity.  SFM/rga