LOOK: Provincial Prosecutor Ludivico Cutaran explains to the Provincial Board his decision to deputize policemen to prosecute cases in first level courts.| Gerard Francisco
CEBU CITY, Philippines — Cebu Capitol is planning to negotiate with judges in-first level courts to accept the direct filing of petty cases to lessen the workload of prosecutors in the province.
“It means that complaints for crimes with imposable penalties of less than 4 years, 2 months and one day of imprisonment, they can be filed directly to the MTC and MCTC and not need to undergo preliminary investigation before the prosecutor’s office,” Board Member John Ismael Borgonia told CDN Digital.
Municipal Trial Courts (MTCs) and Municipal Circuit Trial Courts (MCTC) are considered as first-level courts that cognize petty crimes.
Read more: Borgonia: Deputizing police prosecutors will be ‘a great injustice’ to private complainants
Read more: PB summons Provincial Prosecutor for delegating police to act as prosecutors in lower courts
Last October 22, Borgonia and Provincial Prosecutor Ludivico Cutaran met with Governor Gwendolyn Garcia to settle the dilemma on the workload of the prosecutors which prompted Cutaran to withdraw the prosecutors from their cases in the first level courts.
Cutaran, instead, deputized police officers to act as prosecutors of the cases pending in MTCs and MCTCs through a memorandum issued on September 23, 2019.
Cutaran said they needed to delegate the task so they could focus their resources to the “more serious cases” pending in the regional trial courts (RTCs) and their duties in conducting preliminary investigations, inquests and issuing resolutions.
Borgonia questioned this move as he said that deputizing policemen to prosecute cases would do injustice to private complainants who could not afford to hire lawyers.
Borgonia said that they had yet to set a meeting with the judges handling first level courts to tackle the matter.
As a long term solution, Borgonia added that the province will ask the Department of Justice to detail more prosecutors in Cebu.