The Court of Appeals (CA) has denied the appeal of businessman Cedric C. Lee to reconsider its 2022 decision affirming a trial court’s ruling that denied the dismissal of the serious illegal detention for ransom filed against him and six others by comedian and television host Ferdinand “Vhong” Navarro.
Apart from Lee, charged with violation of Article 267 of the Revised Penal Code before the Taguig City regional trial court were Deniece Millinette Cornejo, Bernice Cua Lee, Simeon Palma Raz Jr., Jose Paolo Gregorio Calma, Sajed Fernandez Abuhijleh, and Ferdinand Guerrero.
The complaint alleged that Lee and his co-accused “with the use of firearm” detained Navarro inside the condominium unit of Cornejo in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City. It also stated that they inflicted physical injuries and threatened to kill Navarro, besides demanding money for his release.
The criminal complaint also stated that P2 million was demanded for Navarro’s release, and that the actor agreed to shell out P1 million.
Lee filed a counter affidavit seeking the dismissal of the case. However, the RTC denied it, prompting Lee to elevate it to the CA which also denied his plea. He then filed a motion for reconsideration.
In his motion, Lee alleged that the first element of the case — the offender is a private individual — should have been expressly alleged in the criminal charge sheet and the prosecution’s failure to do so rendered the charge “defective” and “does not exist in contemplation of law.”
In denying Lee’s motion, the CA through Associate Justice Angelene Mary Quimpo-Sale, ruled that “Generally, a defect pertaining to the failure of an information to charge facts constituting an offense is one that may be corrected by an amendment. In such instances, courts are mandated not to automatically quash the information, rather, it should grant the prosecution the opportunity to cure the defect through an amendment.”
It cited various Supreme Court rulings which sustained the conviction of the accused “even if there was no allegation in the information that the offender is a private individual.”
The serious illegal detention for ransom case was related to the rape charges filed by Cornejo against Navarro.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) upheld the prosecutors’ dismissal of the complaints for rape and acts of lasciviousness filed by Cornejo against Navarro.
However, on July 21, 2022, the CA granted Cornejo’s petition as it directed the DOJ to file the criminal complaints before the RTC.
Navarro challenged the CA’s ruling before the SC which ordered the dismissal of the charges of rape and acts of lasciviousness filed by Cornejo against him.
The SC decision, written by Justice Henri Jean Paul Inting, ruled that the CA gravely erred in ordering the DOJ to resurrect the rape case against Navarro despite the inconsistencies in the complaints filed by Cornejo.
“To suggest that a prosecutor tum a blind eye to such glaring and manifest inconsistencies — under the premise that the evaluation thereof would already touch on the complainant’s credibility to be solely assessed in a full-blown trial — would be to compel the prosecutor to satisfy himself or herself to mere allegations in a complaint, and abdicate his or her bounden duty to screen cases for trial, thus passing the buck to the trial courts,” the SC said.
“Indeed, no amount of skillful or artful deportment, manner of speaking, or portrayal in a subsequent court proceeding could supplant Comejo’s manifestly inconsistent and highly deficient, doubtful, and unclear accounts of her supposed harrowing experience in the hands of Navarro,” it added.
“Otherwise, she would be allowed to deliberately change, or worse concoct and fabricate, theories in order to rectify the weakness of her accusations as pointed out by the prosecutors in the dismissal of her previous complaints,” the CA further said.