De Lima seeks resumption of Barrameda murder trial

With the arrest of a possible second key witness in the Ruby Rose Barrameda murder case, the government is taking steps to ensure that the trial that has been stalled since February will soon resume, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said yesterday.

De Lima made the announcement after she met with the team prosecuting the Barrameda case whose members include representatives from the National Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice and the Office of the Solicitor-General.

Speaking to reporters, she said that she had congratulated and acknowledged the work done by the NBI team which arrested last week Ronaldo Ponce who had been hiding in the city of Cauayan, Isabela province.

Ponce, who wants to be a state witness, has admitted that he drove Barrameda from her house in Parañaque City to a warehouse in Navotas in 2007.

He has also confessed that he poured cement into the drum where the victim’s body had been placed and that he was the one who threw the drum off the Navotas Fish Port.

Barrameda’s body was found only in 2009 after one of her alleged leaders, Manuel Montero, tipped off the police about its whereabouts.

Montero, who also linked Ponce to the crime, had applied to turn state witness but his offer was denied by the Court of Appeals which said he failed to satisfy all the requirements under the revised rules of court.

With the arrest of Ponce, De Lima said she had instructed the OSG to “find [a means] to trigger the early resolution by the Court of Appeals of the pending motion for reconsideration filed by the OSG in behalf of the DOJ (Department of Justice).”

She said she wanted Ponce arraigned as soon as possible but because of a ruling by the appellate court in February which ordered the trial’s suspension, it was hard for the government to move.

“You feel so helpless. That’s really irritating. You want the case to move, you want the trial to resume but you can’t do anything because of the [court] decision,” De Lima lamented.

In February, the court ordered the trial stopped indefinitely while it was hearing the petition filed by Barrameda’s father-in-law and one of the accused, Manuel Jimenez Jr., who sought the inhibition of the judge handling the case.

The court later decided in Jimenez’s favor.