CA upholds granting of bail to Ampatuan son
THE COURT of Appeals (CA) has affirmed the provisional liberty granted by the Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 221 to the son of the late former Maguindanao governor and clan patriarch Andal Ampatuan, Sr.
In a Jan. 31 decision by its 16th Division, the appellate court denied the petition of certiorari filed by government prosecutors seeking to reverse the order of Quezon City RTC Branch 221 Presiding Judge Jocelyn SolisReyes granting Datu Sajid Islam Ampatuan’s motion to post bail on Jan. 9, 2015.
Datu Ampatuan is among the primary suspects in the Ampatuan Massacre of Nov. 23, 2009, that claimed the lives of 58 — including 32 journalists and other media workers. They were then accompanying supporters of then- gubernatorial aspirant Esmael G. Mangudadatu who was scheduled to file his candidacy that day.
On Dec. 1 that year, the Department of Justice (DoJ) filed at the Cotabato City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 the first batch of “Information” (25 cases) against Datu Ampatuan’s brother, former Datu Unsay mayor Andal “Unsay” Ampatuan, Jr. A year later, on Dec. 8, 2010, the Supreme Court (SC) granted a petition to transfer the trial to Quezon City.
The late Ampatuan, Sr. was tagged as the mastermind of the massacre. He died of cancer on July 17, 2015.
More than a hundred people including members of the Ampatuan clan are facing multiple counts of murder.
Datu Ampatuan was granted bail after posting P11.6 million — or P200,000 per murder count.
In affirming the trial court’s order, the appellate court said: “The Court finds that public respondent (Judge Solis-Reyes) did not act in a whimsical, arbitrary and capricious manner when she granted private respondent’s motions for bail.”
‘MERE PRESENCE NOT STRONG EVIDENCE’
“Public respondent opined that private respondent’s mere presence during the three private meetings with the other accused does not constitute strong evidence of guilt to deny his motion especially when the evidence showed that he did not utter any word ‘while matters related to the crime were supposedly being discussed,’” the court also noted.
The CA also noted that during the hearing on the petition for bail, the prosecution was granted “ample opportunity” to oppose the motion but failed to convince the court.
“The Court finds no grave abuse of discretion, much less a simple one, that can be cogently attributed to the public respondent,” the decision reads.
“The findings were arrived at in the exercise of the public respondent’s sound discretion after considering the evidence adduced by the prosecution,” the CA added.
The 10- page decision was penned by Associate Justice Marie Christine Azcarraga-Jacob. Concurring are Associate Justices Ricardo R. Rosario and Edwin D. Sorongon.