MANILA - The Supreme Court has affirmed the dismissal from government service of a lawyer who was found to be in possession of missing case records in connection with the murder of Ruby Rose Barrameda, whose body was found in hardened concrete inside a drum in Navotas City in 2009.

In a decision promulgated on June 27, 2023, the Supreme Court en banc denied the petition for review on certiorari filed by lawyer Jerik Roderick Jacoba who was dismissed from the Office of the Deputy Executive Secretary for Legal Affairs for grave misconduct and serious dishonesty.

The Barrameda case was forwarded to the Office of the President after the Department of Justice resolved in 2010 to indict Barrameda’s husband Manuel Jimenez III for parricide.

Jimenez appealed the DOJ resolution before the OP and the case records were thus forwarded to the OP’s Legal Affairs Office.

In 2012, then Undersecretary Ronaldo Geron of the OP inquired about the status of the appeal but the case records could not be located.

Following an investigation, the missing records and the draft decision were eventually found in a locked filing cabinet used by Jacoba.

The documents were immediately forwarded to then Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa who immediately denied Jimenez’s appeal for lack of merit.

Ochoa also found Jacoba guilty of the grave misconduct and serious dishonesty charges as he had full access to the areas where the missing case records were seen.

“These are relevant pieces of evidence that substantially support the conclusion that Jacoba abused his influence and authority to spirit away the case records, hide them in a filing cabinet under his control, and then refuse to reveal their whereabouts when asked about them,” the Supreme Court said in the decision penned by Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen.

Before the case went to the Supreme Court, Jacoba appealed his dismissal before the Civil Service Commission but was denied.

Jacoba then brought his case to the Court of Appeals which partly granted his appeal, finding him guilty of simple neglect of duty instead of grave misconduct and serious dishonesty.

The Supreme Court however found that the evidence on record substantially supports the CSC’s findings that Jacoba committed grave misconduct and serious dishonesty.

“Hence, as the acknowledged expert in its field, the Civil Service Commission’s findings of fact should be binding on the courts when supported by substantial evidence,” the Supreme Court said.

In 2019, the parricide case against the husband of Ruby Rose and the murder case against her father-in-law and two others were dismissed by a Malabon City court for lack of probable cause.

• Woman stuffed in a drum: Court junks parricide, murder raps vs Ruby Rose Barrameda suspects

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Watch more News on iWantTFC