FORMER Police Officer Michael Ray Aquino is expected to be extradited soon to the Philippines to face murder charges in connection with the November 2000 slaying of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and his driver after a U.S. Court of Appeals denied on Monday his last-ditch petition for a rehearing.
The U.S. court junked the April 11 motion filed by Aquino who is detained at the Hudson County jail in New Jersey while awaiting extradition to Manila.
The decision read, “The petition for rehearing filed by Appellant having been submitted to all judges who participated in the decision of this court, and to all the other available circuit judges in active service, and a majority of the judges who concurred in the decision not having asked for rehearing, and a majority of the circuit judges of the circuit in regular active service not having voted for rehearing by the court en banc, the petition for rehearing is hereby denied.”
Aquino had anchored his April petition on a ruling by the Philippine Court of Appeals that dismissed the murder complaint against Sen. Panfilo Lacson, also accused in the double murder case. The Philippine court declared that their former colleague, Cezar Mancao II, was not a credible and trustworthy witness. Mancao has asked to be admitted as state witness.
Aquino also assailed the credibility of the evidence presented by the prosecution in the Philippine court.
The prosecution has alleged, “Dacer and Corbito were blindfolded, tied and strangled to death. Their bodies were placed on top of a pile of stray wood and rubber tires, doused with gasoline and burned. The fire lasted for a mere thirty minutes, as declared by the prosecution witness at the trial. Recovered at the scene were a few pieces of bones and metal dental implants.”
But Aquino said the prosecution’s narration of the crime defies science as even “a closed environment of a crematorium requires, on average, several hours” to burn a human body.
He also cited a finding by the National Bureau of Investigation that the bones presented by the prosecution were animal remains.
In his appeal, Aquino said:
- The deaths have not been substantiated by any physical evidence.
- No witness has made any statement implicating him in the deaths.
- The only statement linking him to the slayings is Mancao’s “hearsay.”
Aquino’s earlier appeal to stay his extradition, filed in December, was denied.
Aquino, a former police superintendent and member of the now defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF), Mancao and another police officer, Glen Dumlao, left for the United States in July 2001, saying they knew the Arroyo administration would run after them because of their association with Lacson and former President Joseph Estrada.
He became an illegal alien in the U.S. after his passport was canceled. While his legal status was being appealed, he got embroiled in the case of Fil-American Leandro Aragoncillo, a former FBI analyst who was accused of stealing classified documents.
Aquino admitted to “possession of classified documents” and served time for the offense.
On April 23, 2008, the Philippine government sought his extradition, which a U.S. District Court granted on March 4, 2010.
Dacer and Corbito have been missing since Nov. 24, 2000.
