Two Chinese men were killed as authorities on Sunday seized dozens of packages containing a substance believed to be shabu in a buy-bust operation in Cavite.
Philippine National Police and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency officials said if the substance is shabu, the packages”•weighing 274 kilos in total”•would be worth P1.9 billion on the street.
READ: Simultaneous Makati police raids net 59 individuals
The PNP and PDEA operatives conducted the buy-bust operation against Vincent Du Lim and Hong Li Wen, who
were killed as the suspected drugs were recovered at Brgy. Amaya 1 along Antero Soriano Highway in Tanza, Cavite.
This developed as President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug campaign suffered another setback in the area of prosecution after the Court of Appeals acquitted a drug felon busted in 2017 due to the failure of the arresting police officers to follow strict procedures.
In a decision dated Jan. 30, the Court’s 10th Division reversed a November 2017 judgment of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court, Branch 98, that found Joselito De Jesus guilty of possessing illegal drugs.
Meanwhile, Philippine National Police Spokesman Bernard Banac said Sunday the drug-related killings were down 70 percent in 2018 compared with the year before, when only 272 drug-related homicides took place against 956 cases in 2017.
The case of De Jesus is among the many cases that resulted from the intensified war on drugs by the Duterte administration.
The lower court convicted De Jesus after finding him guilty beyond reasonable doubt of possessing 0.16 gram of shabu and sentenced him to imprisonment of 12 years to 14 years and a fine of P300,000.
But the appellate court ruled that the RTC committed an error after it failed to consider the violation committed by police officers during the arrest of the accused in an operation on Aug. 12, 2017.
In particular, the court cited the failure of the police officers to inventory the drugs confiscated during the operation in the presence of a representative from the Department of Justice and the media as required by law.
“In the instant case, the prosecution failed to establish that the arresting officers complied with the mandatory requirement of securing the presence of the required witnesses in the conduct of inventory provided under Section 21 of R.A. No. 9165,” says the decision written by Associate Justice Ramon Garcia.
The appellate court held that the requirement for the presence of witnesses during anti-narcotics operations was “necessary to protect against the possibility of planting, contamination or loss of the seized drug.”
READ: Pasay police arrest 30 in drug raids
Section 21 of RA 916 specifically requires the presence of the suspect, his lawyer, an elected public official, a representative of the DOJ’s National Prosecution Service or the media during the physical inventory of the seized items.
This provision provides for exemptions, but the court rejected the excuse of the arresting officers that they invited representatives of the DOJ and the media but none of them arrived during the operation.
The court found such alibi “too flimsy to justify their failure to secure the attendance of the required witnesses.”
“In view of the foregoing, the Court is constrained to acquit appellant for failure of the prosecution to provide a justifiable reason for the non-compliance with the chain of custody rule thereby creating doubt as to the integrity and evidentiary value of the seized illegal drugs,” the appellate court said.
READ: Shabu worth P7-billion slips past Customs
READ: Rody bares new list of ‘narco-cops’, shabu prices dip