The Sandiganbayan’s Fifth Division has rejected Senator Jinggoy Estrada’s motion asking to be allowed out of detention to attend the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, ruling that the request lacked merit.
Estrada is being held on a non-bailable plunder charge pending before the same division, along with two counts of graft, all connected to the flood control scandal. Accused facing non-bailable offenses must first petition for bail and win the court’s approval before any temporary liberty.
The seven-page resolution, penned by Associate Justice Maryann Corpus Mañalac, disposed of the June 29 motion outright. Rappler reported the operative line denying the “Motion to Allow Accused Senator Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada to Attend the Senate Impeachment Trial of Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio dated June 29, 2026.”
“While an impeachment trial is of paramount constitutional importance, its significance does not, by itself, provide a basis for the grant of his request,” the division said. It added that it could not view the plea “to be in the nature of an emergency or compelling temporary leave,” and cautioned that granting it “would substantially erode the very restraints that lawful detention necessarily entails.”
Estrada had anchored his motion on Article XI, Section 3(6) of the 1987 Constitution, which requires the concurrence of two-thirds of all members of the Senate to convict, and on his contention that his role as senator-judge constituted a compelling reason justifying temporary leave from detention.
Length of the proceedings figured in the court’s thinking. GMA News reported the resolution observed that the trial period would span roughly 31 weeks.
Prosecutors have pegged the P573-million plunder case to what they described as an intricate mechanism of illegal budgetary insertions and project allocations within the Department of Public Works and Highways infrastructure portfolio for fiscal year 2025, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The motion had first been filed with the Second Division before Estrada’s camp withdrew it, acknowledging the pleading belonged with the Fifth Division, where the plunder case sits. That division granted the withdrawal and recalled its order directing prosecutors to comment.
A separate 90-day preventive suspension issued by the Second Division over one of the graft cases already bars Estrada from performing legislative duties. Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian has said that suspension alone would keep the senator from sitting as a judge in the impeachment court, and he has ruled out any Senate petition on Estrada’s behalf.
“We cannot file [a petition to] the Sandigan because we are not a party of interest. It’s between the respondent and also the state. We’re not involved in that,” Gatchalian told reporters. He has maintained that 16 votes remain the threshold for conviction regardless of how many senator-judges take part.
