Looks like somebody made a big mistake.
“Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Leila de Lima said Wednesday she approved the parole granted to convicted killer and former Batangas governor Jose Antonio Leviste, but she was now considering taking it back,” reports Maricel Cruz in Manila Standard Today.
De Lima revealed that she had already submitted a memo to President Benigno Aquino III justifying the parole. However, after reviewing it, she realized that “the Board of Pardons and Parole had glossed over Leviste’s evasion of sentence in 2011 when a Makati court found he had unauthorized furloughs from jail.”
De Lima was quoted as saying, “There are only two options now: to stick to the parole or to take it back, and I think we have to take it back. But I want to wait for the President’s decision.”
It’s baffling that De Lima didn’t remember that detail earlier as the 73-year-old Leviste was caught roaming in his LPL building in Makati City in May 2011. The report pointed out that “Leviste’s unauthorized trips outside his detention cell even cost then Bureau of Corrections chief Ernesto Diokno his job.”
Leviste, who is the ex-husband of Senator Loren Legarda, was convicted of homicide in January 2009 for killing his friend Rafael de las Alas on January 12, 2007.
Screengrab from ABS-CBN news clip
