The Court of Appeals (CA) has upheld with finality its decision rejecting the plea of murder convict and former Autonomous Region on Muslim Mindanao Governor Datu Zaldy Ampatuan to be transferred to a hospital.
In a resolution released last April 11, 2023 but was made public only on Tuesday, the CA’s former 17th Division denied Ampatuan’s motion for reconsideration of its decision issued on July 4, 2022 which upheld the ruling issued by the Regional Trial Court of Quezon City Branch 221 denying the petitioner’s urgent motion to be transferred from the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) to a hospital at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ampatuan’s camp claimed that he was vulnerable to contracting COVID while inside the NBP due to his delicate condition, having suffered stroke on three different occasions.
The former governor said he was also suffering from hypertension, diabetes and chronic atrial fibrillation.
The trial court denied Ampatuan’s request, saying that the NBP has its own facility where he could receive proper medical treatment, if necessary. This was upheld by the CA in a seven-page decision issued on July 20, 2022.
The appellate court held that Ampatuan failed to justify how the “clear and present danger” rule applies to his case considering that the issues he raised neither involved the freedom of expression nor of religion.
The CA noted that the petition was filed by Ampatuan when general community quarantine was still being implemented due to high COVID infections and vaccines against the virus were not yet available.
But the appellate court noted that the number of COVID-19 have significantly gone down following the roll-out of the vaccination program by the government in March 2021.
“These developments are based on and affirmed by official statements of the government and are also of public knowledge of which judicial notice may be taken. And while the Court in the case at bar is called upon to make a determination of whether respondent judge acted with grave abuse of discretion in issuing the assailed order, these events and developments have supervened, thereby rendering the reliefs prayed for moot,” the appellate court declared
In his motion for reconsideration, Ampatuan insisted that his petition is not yet moot and academic since the possibility of Covid-19 infection is not the main ground for his request for hospitalization, but his existing diseases that are life threatening.
The former local official argued that despite developments in the Covid-19 situation, his health remains to be at risk due to his medical conditions dating back to 2011 or years even before the pandemic happened.
The petitioner insisted that the trial court’s order and the CA’s ruling upholding the latter’s ruling was tantamount to a deprivation of his right to life and health.
Ampatuan pleaded that for humanitarian reason, he should transferred to a hospital and medical facility.
In junking Ampatuan’s MR, the CA held that the petitioner claimed that COVID-19 was not the main ground of his petition but his existing medical conditions, his urgent motion for hospitalization filed before the lower court was anchored on the existing COVID-19 situation in June 2020.
“To repeat, with the developments in the Covid-19 situation, this Court finds the reliefs prayed for in the petition for certiorari and the instant motion moot,” the appellate court held.
“All other issues raised by petitioner in the Motion for Reconsideration are but a mere reiteration of the issues presented in his petition for certiorari, and which were already exhaustively discussed in the Decision. Therefore, there exists no cogent reason to reconsider the Decision of this Court,” it added.
Ampatuan, along with brothers Andal and Anwar Sr. and several others were convicted for 57 counts murder in connection with the massacre of 57 people, including 32 journalists, in Maguindanao 14 years ago.