Court denies bail to Leila de Lima

Former senator Leila de Lima will stay in detention in Camp Crame after a Muntinlupa court denied her petition for bail in her remaining drug case.

In a decision dated June 7, Presiding Judge Romeo Buenaventura of the Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 256 denied the petitions and motions for bail filed by De Lima and co-accused Franklin Jesus Bucayu, Ronnie Dayan, Joenel Sanchez and Jose Adrian Dera in case 17-167.

“Wherefore, premises considered,

the instant petitions and motions for bail are hereby denied,” Buenaventura wrote in his decision. “Considering the foregoing and after a careful review of the totality of prosecution’s evidence, the Court is convinced that the evidence of guilt against all the above-named accused for the crime of conspiracy to commit illegal drug trading is strong.”

Under case 17-167, filed by the Department of Justice in February 2017, De Lima, Bucayu, Dayan, Sanchez, Dera, Wilfredo Elli and Jaybee Sebastian (now deceased) were charged for conspiracy to commit illegal drug trading.

The DOJ charged that between March 2013 to May 2015, the accused used inmates at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa to sell and trade dangerous drugs using mobile phones and other electronic devices, and allegedly got the proceeds amounting to ₱70 million.

According to the court, “At the outset, it must be pointed out that based on the evidence, taken as a whole, the prosecution portrayed the entire picture of the conspiracy to commit illegal drug trading among the accused in this wise: a) accused De Lima, Sanchez, Dayan, and Dera, together with inmates Colanggo, Sebastian, Durano, Capones, Martinez, and their respective subordinates, conspired to sell and dispose the smuggled drugs, with the purpose of using the proceeds thereof in raising De Lima’s campaign funds for the 2016 senatorial elections. Accused De Lima, through accused Sanchez and Dayan, and accused Bucayu, through accused Elli, in exchange of granting requests of inmate Colanggo to smuggle drugs and communication devices and giving protection to the inmates’ illegal drug transactions, received payola sourced from the same drug transactions.”

The court added that De Lima’s “plea for provisional liberty on humanitarian considerations is untenable.” It said, “the accused herself admitted that though she is already a senior citizen and has several health issues, she is not suffering from any serious or life-threatening health condition. This negates the need for her to be placed in a special or alternative facility outside of her current confinement.”

“All the foregoing, notwithstanding, let it be stressed that in finding the evidence of guilt strong, the Court does not in any way prejudge what the final outcome of the case will be. The culpability or innocence of the accused will still be decided on the basis of all the evidence presented by the parties and only after trial on the merits of the case,” it said.

The court set the prosecution’s presentation of evidence-in-chief on June 19 and 26.

Two other drug cases filed against De Lima were already dismissed by Muntinlupa courts.