Muntinlupa court acquits De Lima in last remaining drug case

Former Senator Leila De Lima has been acquitted by a Muntinlupa City court in her last remaining drug case filed under the previous administration.

Muntinlupa City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 206 on 24 June granted De Lima’s demurrer to evidence, which is equivalent to an acquittal, filed on 20 March this year in case no. 17-167, one of the three cases filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in February 2017.

With the dismissal of the last drug cases against De Lima, all the three drug cases filed by the DOJ have been dismissed.

Two of the three cases, 17-165 and 17-166, were dismissed by Muntinlupa courts in 2021 and 2023.

A demurrer to evidence is filed by the accused after the prosecution rests seeking to dismiss the case on the ground of insufficiency of evidence.

“Once a demurrer to evidence has been granted in a criminal case, the grant amounts to an acquittal. Any further prosecution for the same offense would violate the accused's constitutional right against double jeopardy,” according to a previous Supreme Court ruling.

The DOJ in the three cases originally charged De Lima and others of illegal drug trading but it later changed it to conspiracy to commit illegal drug trading.

In case no. 17-167, the DOJ charged between March 2013 and May 2015, De Lima, former Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) director Franklin Jesus Bucayu, Ronnie Dayan, Joenel Sanchez, and Jose Adrian Dera 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 P70 million.

On 10 November last year in an order, the Muntinlupa RTC Branch 206 granted bail to De Lima, Bucayu, Dayan, Sanchez and Dera. They were released from detention after each posted bail amounting to P300,000 set by the court.

In granting bail to De Lima and her co-accused, the court ruled that “the prosecution was not able to discharge its burden of establishing that the guilt of the said accused is strong.”

Because of this ruling the former lawmaker was allowed to be released from detention after more than six years since 2017.

De Lima in her demurrer to evidence, stated that “what is significant in this case is that almost all of the most important evidence of the Prosecution have already been presented during the hearing for bail, and therefore passed upon by the Honorable Court in its 10 November 2023 Order, declaring that the Prosecution's evidence is not strong, thereby granting herein Accused her application for bail.”

The reaction of the DOJ in the dismissal of the last drug case of De Lima is yet to be received as of press time.