MANILA - The Court of Appeals (CA) has acquitted a man who stumbled his way into a drug buy-bust in Quezon City five years ago.

In a resolution dated February 22 and released on Wednesday, the court acquitted Robin Bulan after Evelyn Santos, his co-accused in the drug charges, was acquitted in 2020.

Santos was arrested in a buy-bust by Quezon City police officers on June 27, 2017, following reports of widespread sale of shabu by a certain "Bebe Komang" who later turned out to be Santos at the back of a market in Barangay Apolonio Samson.

In the middle of the drug transaction between undercover policemen and Santos, police claimed that Bulan approached Santos and asked Santos, "Ate, yung basura ko ("Sister, where is my trash?"), using the term to refer to shabu and thereafter was handed a sachet of white substance by Santos.

The two were charged and subsequently convicted by the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 226 in April 2019.

Santos who was sentenced to life imprisonment later appealed her case before the Court of Appeals (CA) who acquitted her, noting lapses in the handling of the evidence by law enforcers.

Following Santos' acquittal by the CA in August 2020, the Public Attorney's Office (PAO) asked the CA to consider likewise acquitting Luban who had not filed an appeal.

The PAO cited a precedent case, People v. Libre, decided by the Supreme Court in 2018, where the high court in acquitting an accused also ordered the acquittal of a co-accused even if the latter did not appeal his conviction.

"In the light of the pronouncement in Libre and the attendant circumstances herein, we are compelled to order the acquittal of Robin Bulan and to direct his immediate release from custody," the CA said.

The tribunal reiterated that the breaks in the chain of custody and the failure to preserve the integrity of the body of the crime "gives no assurance of the absence of switching, planting or contamination, considering that the case involves a miniscule quantity of shabu". (PNA)