‘FLAWED CASE’
Ellah Joy
What went wrong?
Hasty police work, lack of police testimony during trial and having “too many prosecutors” handle the case were some factors cited for the dismissal of charges against the woman accused in the 2011 kidnap-homicide of schoolgirl Ellah Joy Pique.
Lawyer Joan Saniel, executive director of the Children’s Legal Bureau (CLB), said the case was flawed from the start, when police officials arrested the first set of suspects who turned out to be mistakenly identified.
“Mora man nga nagdali-dali ang mga police pagsulbad niining kasoha. Wa gyuy klarong investigation nga nahimo. (The police investigators seemed in a hurry to solve this case. As a result, no proper investigation was ever conducted),” she said yesterday.
Saniel said a motion for reconsideration could be filed in a bid to elevate the case to the Court of Appeals, a move that is a long shot.
But the slain girl’s father, Renante Pique, said he had no more stamina for a longer legal battle.
“Kapoy na kaayo ko. Dinhi na lang ko kutob. (I’m very tired. I’ll have to end my journey here.”
He said he did everything he could, throughout the three year roller coaster of events from the search for his daughter, to the arrest of two sets of suspects, and the trial.
In dismissing the case against the accused Bella Ruby Santos, Judge Ester Veloso of the Regional Trial Court said the evidence against the woman was insufficient.
The court also observed that no policeman was presented during the trial to show how an eywitness, a 12-year-old schoolmate of Ella Joy, was investigated.
“By the time she had been taken as a witness, there had already been a previous mistaken identifications of another woman named (Karen) Esdrelon by the child’s companions,” the court said.
“The prosecution has not established why this child’s (witness) identification would be better and more reliable than that of the other children who were also with her at that time,” said the judge, “and why she was not even initially considered a witness by the police.”
Saniel, who appeared in court in the early parts of the trial, was surprised to learn that the proseuction panel didn’t present a single police investigator.
The prosecution team included two CLB lawyers, , lawyer Inocencio De La Cerna Jr. representing the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), and a member of the Cebu Provincial Prosecutors’ Office.
“The problem was that the prosecution was composed of too many lawyers and prosecutors. CLB was assigned to one witness (the 11-year-old child). We no longer had an idea who the other prosecutors presented in court,” Saniel said.
WELL DOCUMENTED
Cebu Vice Gov. Agnes Magpale expressed shock over the acquittal of the accused.
“We thought the case was very well documented,” she told Cebu Daily News in a phone interview.
The prosecution presented 11 witnesses in the trial.
But the court considered as significant only the testimony of one eyewitness, an 11-year-old schoolgirl, who said she saw Ellah Joy accept a ride from a stranger in a dark Pajero as they children walked home from Calaojan Elementary School in Minglanilla town, south Cebu on Feb. 8, 2011.
The judge said the girl’s testimony wasn’t reliable.
The court noted that the child was exposed to television news about the kidnapping of Ellah Joy which could have influenced her testimony.
Saniel, meanwhile, said she believes the young witness was “confused” with the line of questioning of the defense lawyer during the trial.
“The witness was just misled. She was confused about the time frame. That was a minor inconsistency, and that simply meant that she was not coached. Had the witness been coached, she would have answered the question straight and direct,” the lawyer added.
Provincial Prosecutor Pepita Jane Petralba said the dismissal of the criminal charge of kidnapping with homicide was final and non appealable.
When the case was filed with the prosecutors’ office and in court in 2011, Petralba was in the U.S. pursuing further studies.
Probable cause
“When I went through the records of this case, I could say that there was really probable cause against Bella and Griffiths. In fact, the evidence was even more than probable cause,” she said.
“But the standards of the trial court are different. The court is after proof beyond reasonable doubt against the accused.”
Petralba said she will convene the panel of prosecutors in the Ellah Joy kidnap-slay case on Tuesday to revisit what they have done and evaluate the outcome of the case.
“We did everything we could for this case. But I’m sure there are lessons to be learned here,” she said.
In 2011, the provincial police arrested and filed charges against Norwegian Sven Erik Berger and Cebuana nurse Karen Esdrelon—the first set of suspects implicated in the gruesome slay of Ellah Joy.
The couple was released from detention after the prosecutors’ office dismissed the charges for “insufficiency of evidence.”
Bella Ruby Santos was arrested in 2013 and later posted bail. She and her British boyfriend Ian Charles Griffiths were charged with the little girl’s disappearance and death.
The criminal charges against Griffiths remains pending. He left the country a day after Ellah Joy’s body was found and is currently in London.
Defense lawyers said they are studying how to apply the acquittal of Santos in order to benefit Griffiths.
There is no extradition treaty between the Philippines and the United Kingdom.