Manila court acquits Reina Mae Nasino, two others

A Manila court has acquitted activist Reina Mae Nasino, the mother who lost her 3-month-old baby while in detention, and her co-accused of the charge of illegal possession of firearms and explosives.

In a 17-page resolution, the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 47 granted the joint motion for reconsideration filed by Nasino, Alma Moran, and Ram Carlo Bautista assailing a June 2023 court order that denied their demurrer to evidence.

“Accordingly, judgment is hereby rendered finding accused Ram Carlo Bautista… and Alma Moran… and Reina Mae Nasino… not guilty, and are hereby acquitted for failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt,” the Court said.

The three activists were nabbed in November 2019 at the office of Bayan in Tondo, Manila for supposedly violating Republic Act (RA) 10591 or the Comprehensive Firearms and Ammunition Regulation Act and RA 9516 on the unlawful possession of firearms.

In its ruling, the court said that inconsistencies in the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses muddled the prosecution’s evidence.

The Court pointed out that two of the witnesses testified that the search took place on the second floor while the other said the search was made on the third floor.

Meanwhile, one witness said that Bautista led the team to his room to conduct the search but later said during cross-examination that Bautista exchanged arguments with another individual.

“These inconsistencies on the material details of their discovery are so striking that this Court ought not to have ignored or brushed aside,” the Court said.

“They are contradictions that not only undermine all efforts of the Prosecution to reconstruct the event at hand but altogether erode the evidentiary value of the prosecution evidence,” it added.

Further, the witnesses failed to identify in open court the firearms marked which were actually recovered from the accused, according to the court.

“The Court finds that the unmistakable conflicting testimonies of the prosecution witnesses generate serious doubt as to whether the firearms with ammunitions and explosives were really found in the rooms of the accused,” the Court said.

“The constitutional presumption of innocence of the accused has not been demolished for failure of the prosecution in proving their guilty of the illegal possession of firearms, ammunition, and explosives beyond reasonable doubt,” it added.

The court ordered Nasino, Moran and Bautista's release in December 2022 after they posted bail.

Baby River

Nasino, pregnant at the time of her arrest, gave birth to an underweight and jaundiced baby in jail while she was asking the Supreme Court for humanitarian release due to her condition and the pandemic.

She then asked a Manila court to allow her and her sickly baby River to either stay in the hospital or in the prison nursery until the child was 12 months old.

The court rejected her plea, citing the city jail's lack of resources to accommodate her and her child.

When River—cared for by relatives and deprived of her mother's company—was hospitalized with pneumonia at two months old, Nasino asked the court if she could visit her in hospital. The baby died a month later before the court could act on the request.

At both the baby's wake and burial, Nasino was handcuffed and under heavy guard during the short visits she was allowed on both occasions. She was not permitted to embrace her baby's coffin at the funeral.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) denied that the treatment of Nasino at River's wake and burial was "overkill." — BM, GMA Integrated News