The Chiong murder case (People of the Philippines v. Francisco Juan Larrañaga et al.) was a trial regarding an incident on July 16, 1997 in Cebu, the Philippines, in which sisters Marijoy and Jacqueline Chiong were kidnapped, raped, and murdered. Francisco Juan "Paco" Larrañaga (b. 1977), a man of dual Filipino and Spanish citizenship was, along with six others, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death by lethal injection on February 3, 2004. Capital punishment in the Philippines has since been abolished. The Chiong sisters remain missing to this day. Trial Prosecution According to the prosecutors, at 10:00 p.m. on July 16, 1997, Larrañaga and six other defendants kidnapped the Chiong sisters near a mall on the island of Cebu in the Philippines, raped them, and then threw one of the sisters into a ravine. This was later disputed because there was no formal identification of the body, and it was later determined that it was not the body of one of the sisters. The other sister was never found. The testimony of a co-defendant, Davidson Valiente Rusia, was central to the prosecutors' case against Larrañaga. Rusia testified in exchange for blanket immunity. Despite the fact that Rusia's direct testimony lasted days, the trial court only allowed Larrañaga's counsel to cross-examine him for half an hour. During that half-hour, Larrañaga's attorney established that Rusia lied to both the prosecution and the court about his prior convictions. Rusia claimed he had never been convicted of a crime, but he had a history of burglary and forgery; when confronted with this evidence, Rusia fainted. Davidson Rusia is a convicted felon who was a gang member and was sentenced to prison twice in the United States for other crimes. Rusia claimed that he was with Larrañaga in Ayala Center, Cebú early in the evening of July 16, the evening Larrañaga says that he was at R&R Restaurant in Quezon City with his friends. Rusia was unknown to Larrañaga and only appeared as a "state witness" 10 months after the event. Defense Forty five witnesses, including Larrañaga's teachers and classmates at the Center for Culinary Arts (CCA) in Quezon City, testified under oath that he was in Quezon City, when the crime is said to have taken place in Cebu City. However, the trial court considered these testimonies irrelevant, rejecting these as coming from "friends of the accused," and they were not admitted. During