NBI officer’s wife named to tribunal

Angelina Sandoval-Gutierrez has become the eighth woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

Gutierrez, 62, replaces controversial former Justice Fidel Purisima, who retired on Oct. 27.

The new SC justice was with the Court of Appeals in the last nine years. She is married to National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Assistant Director Diego Gutierrez.

This is the first time that three lady magistrates will sit at the High Court simultaneously, with Gutierrez joining incumbent Justices Minerva Gonzaga-Reyes and Consuelo Ynares-Santiago.

Gutierrez, who is from Alitagtag town in Batangas, was endorsed by former Justice Hugo Gutierrez to Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr.

In his letter to Davide as chairman of the Judicial and Bar Council, the former jurist claimed Gutierrez’s name has never been tainted with anomalies.

"The Philippines is fortunate that the few women who have served in the SC enjoy spotless reputations for integrity apart from their diligence. Justice Gutierrez will undoubtedly carry on this tradition if promoted," Justice Gutierrez wrote Davide in his three-page letter.

Other women who served in the SC were Justices Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, Ameurfina Melencio-Herrera, Irene Cortez, Carolina Griño-Aquino and Flerida Ruth Romero.

Gutierrez, a Santo Tomas alumna with post-graduate units from Harvard Law School, was the chairman of the appellate court’s 8th division. She has been in the government service for 37 years.

Upon graduating from UST in 1960, she passed the Bar that same year. She then moved to the NBI for two years, and later moved to the Department of Justice (DOJ) as legal researcher for three years.

She was promoted to judicial supervisor in the department in 1968, and held the position till 1973. For the next 10 years, she was SC attorney.

She was also metropolitan trial court judge in Manila for three years until 1986, then regional trial court judge until 1991. She was later appointed to the CA.

Her three children have also followed her footsteps: her eldest, Aileen, is a prosecution attorney in the DOJ; Francis is an Esquire in Washington DC; and James works as a paralegal in the District Attorney’s Office in New York.