DOJ junks homicide review plea filed by pal of Cebu mayor’s son

Department of Justice building. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

CEBU CITY – The Department of Justice ordered the dismissal of a petition for review filed by a friend of the son of Mayor Jose Esgana of Sta. Fe town who was charged for killing a man outside the chief executive’s house in 2016.

The cause of the dismissal: Pablo Paul Escarlan failed to attach a compact disc containing a PDF file of his petition for review.

Undersecretary Raymund Mecate said in a resolution dated May 11 that Escarlan violated a circular when he filed his petition, asking the DOJ to review the decision of the provincial prosecutor’s office to file homicide case against him for killing Gilbert Delima outside of the house of Esgana on May 9, 2016.

Section 2 (a) of Department Circular No. 018 or the Rule of the Electronic Filing of Petitions for Review provides that “all petitions for review filed shall have, in addition to its attachments, a compact disc containing a PDF file of the petition for review and its attachments.”

“A perusal of the petition shows that respondent-appellant (Escarlan) failed to attach thereto a copy of the motion to defer proceedings duly filed in the appropriate court which is violative of Section 5 of the said Department Order,” said the two-page resolution.

A complaint of murder was earlier filed by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) against Escarlan and the mayor’s son, Joanes Paulo Esgana.

But in resolving the case, Assistant Provincial Prosecutor Ludivico Cutaran downgraded the complaint against Escarlan from murder to homicide and dismissed the case against the mayor’s son for lack of probable cause.

In his resolution, Cutaran said that Delima’s killing was a “spur-of-the-moment” reaction to a verbal tussle involving the victim and Joanes Paulo.