Sandigan junks Jinggoy plea to dismiss graft raps
The Sandiganbayan has denied the motion of former senator Jinggoy Estrada to dismiss the graft charges filed against him by the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with his alleged involvement in the pork barrel scam.
In a seven-page resolution signed by Associate Justice Rafael Lagos of the Sandiganbayan Fifth Division, Estrada’s motion was denied for “lack of merit.”
In his motion, Estrada’s camp cited the Rules on Criminal Procedure that the court can dismiss an offense if a mistake is committed in the filing of information.
However, the court said Estrada mentioned an entirely different reason for the court to dismiss the case, and that it could not yet determine if there was a mistake in the charges because the trial has yet to start.
“Trial has not even started in these cases, and this Court cannot as yet make any finding, even from the reading of the information, that the proper offense has not been charged. From this procedural perspective alone, the accused Motion to Dismiss must fail,” the resolution read.
The court also pointed out that Estrada seeks to quash the information filed against him but is barred “because he has already been arraigned, and he has no grounds to rely on under the rules.”
Estrada, in his motion, asked the anti- graft court to dismiss the 11 counts of graft filed against him, citing that these are redundant and could not be considered as separate crimes from his plunder case.
But the court noted that the information of the graft cases against Estrada is distinct and separate from the information of his plunder case. Thus, the former cannot be absorbed in the latter.
The graft and plunder cases against Estrada all stemmed from his alleged misuse of his Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel that were released to bogus nongovernment organizations allegedly owned by controversial businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.
Estrada is currently detained at the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame, Quezon City.