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B.Jose Castillo vs. Onofre A. Villaluz, etal.

B. JOSE CASTILLO, petitioner, vs. HON. ONOFRE A. VILLALUZ, Judge, Circuit Criminal Court, 7th Judicial District, RENATO MONTES and JOSE DE SILVA, respondents.

G.R. No. 34285 | 1989-03-08

D E C I S I O N


NARVASA, J.:

Judges of Regional Trial Courts (formerly Courts of First Instance) no longer have authority to conduct preliminary investigations. That authority, at one time reposed in them under Sections 13, 14 and 16, Rule 112 of the Rules of Court of 1964, 1 was removed from them by the 1985 Rules on Criminal Procedure, effective on January 1, 1985, 2 which deleted all provisions granting that power to said Judges. We had occasion to point this out in Salta v. Court of Appeals, 143 SCRA 228, and to stress as well certain other basic propositions, namely: (1) that the conduct of a preliminary investigation is "not a...