A man convicted in 2017 by a Cotabato court of illegal drugs and illegal explosives possession has been acquitted by the Supreme Court (SC) for lapses in handling evidence.
The SC Second Division ordered the release of Parok Guman, who was found guilty by the Kabacan, Cotabato Regional Trial Court Branch 22 of selling illegal drugs and possession of explosives during a buy-bust in 2010.
In 2019, the Court of Appeals (CA) overturned Guman’s conviction in view of law enforcers’ non-compliance with the chain of custody but affirmed the illegal possession of explosives charges.
In setting aside the CA ruling and ordering Guman’s acquittal in the explosives charge, the SC said “the presumption that the authorities regularly performed their duties cannot stand due to the discrepancies in the police officers’ testimonies, not only as to the identity of the sachets of shabu but also for the allegedly confiscated hand grenade”.
“The police officers’ unexplained procedural lapses are definitive proof of irregularity. And any taint of irregularity affects the whole performance, making the presumption unavailable,” the SC said in its December 2 decision that was uploaded recently.
The court noted that the arresting officer, SPO1 Edward Clarete, after the supposed seizure of the hand grenade, did not even bother to mark the same as evidence, just as he failed to mark the sachets of suspected shabu.
Afterwards, Clarete surrendered the hand grenade to Chief Inspector Sofronio Cornelio Jr., their supervisor at the time, even if the latter was not the assigned investigator of the case.
Cornelio then turned it over to the investigator, PO3 Randyl Aguba, and also mentioned a certain PO2 Lagutang.
“Indeed, the involvement of a few police officers who did not testify raises doubt regarding the personalities who handled the grenade after it left the hands of SPO1 Clarete and PCI Cornelio. Both PO3 Aguda and PO2 Lagutang did not even execute any affidavit to explain how the explosive was handled and stored. Simply put, their unexplained involvement is suspect,” the SC said.
“Evidently, these findings point to the failure of the prosecution to establish an unbroken chain of custody of the grenade allegedly seized from Guman,” the court said, adding that “there is no way for this court to verify if the links in the chain of custody remained unbroken”.
Source: Philippines News Agency
