GUAGUA, Pampanga – A libel case filed by a policeman against the editor and a writer of Punto, along with the news source, was provisionally dismissed Aug. 12 with copies of the order only released Aug. 25.
Regional Trial Court Branch 52 Judge Jonel S. Mercado ordered the dismissal as the private complainant, SPO3 Jimmy Santos, was absent in three consecutive dates for hearing on July 29, Aug. 5, and Aug. 12, 2020.
The court order said that Public Prosecutor Marlyds L. Estardo-Teodoro manifested that this was the third time that the private complainant was absent and that she was amenable to a provisional dismissal of the case.
Santos, then assigned with the Guagua police station, filed in October 2015 a complaint at the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor of Pampanga against Punto editor Caesar “Bong” Lacson, writer Diosdado “Ding” Cervantes, and Eduardo Manugue, the source of the news that Santos claimed “dishonored and discredited” him.
Punto general manager Atty. Gener Endona who was initially included in the complaint sheet was dropped from the accused when the complaint was elevated to the courts in August 2016.
The complaint stemmed from the story “2 Guagua cops under fire for hiding shabu evidence, acts of lasciviousness” published in Punto’s Aug. 10-11, 2015 issue.
In the story, Manugue, provincial head of the Anti-Poverty Commission, accused Santos of keeping from the court one of three plastic sachets of shabu as evidence seized from a suspected drug dealer in a buy-bust operation.
Manugue also alleged that Santos made personal use of a vehicle impounded in the raid for use as evidence.
Docketed as Criminal case No. G-16-11638 at the RTC Branch 50 of Judge Amor M. Dimatactac-Romero since August 2016, the case remained on pre-trial until February 20, 2020 when Dimatactac-Romero inhibited herself from the case “to provide a clean slate for the parties to start with” citing the certiorari filed a year or so ago by the accused but dismissed by the Court of Appeals, whereby it was raffled off and landed at the RTC Branch 52.
The first hearing of the case under the new judge scheduled on April 1, 2020 was pre-empted by the enhanced community quarantine imposed in Pampanga in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the three scheduled hearings that followed, complainant Santos was absent. As he had been mostly throughout the pendency of the case in the previous court, noted the accused.
