QC prosecutors junk Castro’s grave threats complaint vs. Duterte

Quezon City prosecutors on Friday dismissed the grave threat complaint filed by ACT Teachers party-list France Castro against former President Rodrigo Duterte.

In a 14-page resolution, the QC Office of the City Prosecutor (OCP) recommended the dismissal of the  complaint “for want of sufficient evidence.”

“After a careful and judicious evaluation of the allegations and evidence obtaining in the complaint, the undersigned finds the same to be insufficient to indict respondents for the crime charged against him,” the resolution read.

Sought for comment, Castro said she has yet to receive a copy of the resolution so she cannot give a statement yet.

In November 2023, Castro accused Duterte of grave threat based on the latter's television interview on Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI) where he said: "Kayong mga komunista ang gusto kong patayin (It's you communists whom I want to kill)" and “Sabi ko sa kanya [his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte],  magprangka ka na lang. Itong intelligence fund na ito gagamitin ko para sa utak ng mga Pilipino kasi ito ang target ko, kayong mga komunista andiyan sa Congress. Prangkahin mo na 'yan si France Castro (I told her, be frank. [Say] I will use this intelligence fund for the mental development of Filipinos because my targets are the communists there in Congress. Be frank with France Castro)."

Duterte made the comment in defending the P650-million confidential funds allocated to the Office of the Vice President and P150 million to the Department of Education, both headed by his daughter Vice President Sara Duterte, after the House of Representatives’ decision to realign the P1.23 billion confidential fund under the proposed 2024 national budget.

Though he did not personally appear before the QC prosecutor’s office, Duterte in his counter-affidavit denied that he committed grave threat against the lawmaker.

According to the QC prosecutor’s office, the way or the manner by which Duterte uttered his remarks and the words he used “do not convincingly establish that indeed respondent intended them to be taken seriously.” 

It said that Duterte’s words also do not establish that they were made for the purpose of making Castro believe that they would be carried into effect.

“If the intention of the respondent was really to intimidate and to take seriously such threatening remarks/ statements… he would not have taken so much prologues and would have just directly and immediately pronounce the threats conceived in his mind,” it said.

Further, the OCP said that it must be taken into account that the statements were made during the height of the issue on confidential funds.

“Being the father of the Vice-President, the respondent would naturally be disappointed and would come to the defense of her daughter in the midst of such political issues/attacks,” it said. 

“In fact, it would appear that the respondent's heightened emotions when he uttered/stated the alleged threatening statements, remarks, comments and/or utterances were seemingly triggered by such issues due to the various politically motivated attacks against [his] daughter,” it added.

The OCP also said that it found it unusual “if not ridiculous” for an individual to make public pronouncements of death threats or threatening remarks.

Meanwhile, it said that Castro failed to obtain authentication from Facebook, YouTube, or SMNI regarding the authenticity of the post, video, or television broadcast.

“Absent of any proper authentication, this Office cannot just take on its face value the genuineness and veracity of the subject threatening remarks/utterances/statements allegedly perpetrated by the respondent, most especially so that it constitutes so to speak the "corpus delicti" of the crime subject of the case,” it said.

“Without the necessary and proper authentication, there is no assurance that the afore-quoted threatening remarks and/or statements were correctly quoted or extracted from the original text/upload/post,” it added.—AOL, GMA Integrated News