Sandiganbayan denies Jinggoy’s urgent motion to join in Mamasapano Senate inquiry

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada. Photo courtesy of Estrada’s Facebook page.

MANILA — The Sandiganbayan denied Monday detained Senator Jinggoy Estrada’s urgent motion to join his colleagues in the Senate to investigate the Mamasapano bloodbath.

For lack of merit, Fifth Division of Sandiganbayan did not allow Estrada to leave his detention cell in Camp Crame to attend the first Senate investigation to get first-hand information and personally ask the invited guest.

“Further, as manifested by the prosecution, the Senate committee on Public Order and Illegal Drugs has nine senator-members, while the Senate committee on Peace, Unification and Reconciliation which will conduct the investigation jointly with the former, is composed of seven senator-members. We thus agree with the prosecution that the presence of accused Estrada in said investigation is not indispensable as the committees involved can still proceed with their inquiry without his [Estrada] physical presence,” the resolution reads.

“We find the instant motion to be similar in its objective to the one previously filed, hence, we are just adopting the ratio decidendi in the resolution issued in the said incident. Accused-movant has not advance any justification which will convinced the court to depart from its previous ruling. In fact, there is an additional ground to deny the present motion as correctly pointed out by the prosecution, the same involves a grant of temporary liberty prior to his resolution of his petition for bail,” it added.

The anti-graft court claimed they were not convinced that it is necessary for accused Estrada that his presence in the said investigation is necessary saying that this is also a duplication of his earlier motion to conduct hearings while in detention.

“The records shows that accused-movant’s previously filed a motion for leave to conduct committee hearings in his detention place was not given due course and his motion for reconsideration thereof was likewise denied,” the resolution said.

On February 4, 2015, Estrada filed an urgent resolution asking Sandiganbayan to allow him be part of pool of senators who will investigate and ask questions to the invited guest on the Senate inquiry on the Mamasapano incident claiming 44 lives of elite forces of Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police on January 25, 2015.

Fifth Division Chairman and Associate Justice Roland Jurado said bail hearings on Estrada’s bail is not yet resolved.