THE Justice department has downgraded to homicide from murder the criminal charges filed against the policemen involved in the killing of then Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa and his fellow inmate Raul Yap inside the Baybay, Leyte sub-provincial jail last year.
In a motion filed on June 6, Leyte provincial prosecutor Arlene Hunamayor Cordovez informed the Baybay, Leyte Regional Trial Court, Branch 14, of the department’s May 29 resolution downgrading the charges against the accused.
Cordovez said she received a copy of the department’s decision on June 2 ordering her to file the required motion to amend the information against the policemen led by Supt. Marvin Marcos.
The accused earlier filed a petition seeking to reverse the resolution of a five-man panel of prosecutors that recommended their indictment for murder in March.
The Baybay RTC had effectively suspended the hearing of the case while waiting for the Justice department to decide on the petition.
In its March resolution, the department said Marcos and the other respondents conspired with one another to kill Espinosa and Raul Yap inside their cells.
Marcos and 10 of his men were later charged with two counts of murder.
The department found that the killing of Espinosa and Yap were attended by treachery, and that the accused used stealth to carry out the raid in which they clearly outnumbered the victims.
The accused said they conducted the operation after they received information that firearms and illegal drugs were in Espinosa’s detention cell and that the latter fired on them first, prompting them to retaliate.
After the issuance of the March 2 resolution, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said the indictment only went to show that the government would not tolerate any misdeeds of its officers.
During a Senate inquiry on the case, Aguirre also told lawmakers that the killings might have been premeditated as he noted it was unusual to serve a search warrant on the wee hours considering that Espinosa was already detained in a government jail facility.
The National Bureau of Investigation also disputed the policemen’s claim that Espinosa and Yap were killed in a shootout inside their detention cell, saying that what happened was a rubout.