The Malabon City regional trial court (RTC) has been asked to uphold its earlier ruling which denied the motion filed by government prosecutors to utilize self-confessed killer Manuel A. Montero as state witness in the Ruby Rose Barrameda-Jimenez murder case.

In an opposition to the motion for reconsideration filed by the Barrameda family, Manuel Jimenez Jr. — one of the accused in the murder case and father-in-law of the victim — told the trial court that “an accused cannot be made a hostile witness for the prosecution for to do so would compel him to be a witness against himself.”

Jimenez Jr. pointed out that “if Montero’s statements do not even conform or jibe with the physical evidence and the sworn statements of the complaining witnesses, then sound logic dictates that the said physical evidence and sworn statements cannot and will not corroborate the testimony of Montero to be given in open court.”

Ruby Rose, estranged wife of Manuel Jimenez III, went missing on March 14, 2007.

On May 18, 2009, Montero surrendered to the police, confessed to the killing of Ruby Rose, and implicated at least six other persons in the slaying.

In denying the plea of government prosecutors to exclude Montero from the criminal case, RTC Judge Hector B. Almeyda ruled that a primordial consideration for the discharge of an accused to be utilized as state witness is that he must not be the most guilty — a finding that has to be gauged from the statement of the accused, himself, and other available evidence.