For foot-dragging on cases assigned to him, the Supreme Court (SC) ordered yesterday the indefinite suspension of Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Francis Garchitorena and fined him P20,000 for gross negligence of duty.
The administrative sanctions were handed down in connection with a complaint filed by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, the country’s largest association of lawyers, regarding delays in the resolution of more than 130 corruption cases pending in Garchitorena’s court.
"It is not a topic for great rejoicing," Garchitorena told reporters, adding he will seek clarification of the decision.
Garchitorena’s suspension starts on Dec. 1, and Senior Justice Minita Chico-Nazario, chairwoman of the anti-graft court’s fifth division, will take over Garchitorena’s seat in an acting capacity.
Garchitorena asserted that some of the cases were actually handled by other justices and that other delays were caused by a variety of reasons that did not involve laziness.
"All of these is not a product of sloth," he insisted.
The SC justices were unanimous in imposing the administrative sanctions on Garchitorena, although they differed on the length of suspension, with one of them batting for one year.
While serving his punishment, Garchitorena was enjoined to do some homework — write decisions on cases pending in his sala.
The High Tribunal gave Garchitorena six months to undo the backlog of unresolved cases in the Sandiganbayan first division which he heads.
He was also directed to write decisions on cases not assigned to any ponente (the justice who pens a decision).
Garchitorena was told to write the decisions himself, and not to delegate the task to any of his subordinates, or to the other divisions.
"There shall be no unloading of cases to other divisions, or to the first division," the SC ruled.
In a 43-page decision penned by Justice Bernardo Pardo, the court noted that of the 198 cases raffled off to the first division, 60 have been resolved as of November last year, leaving 138 cases which were "submitted long ago."
"For almost one year, not one case was decided/resolved by the Presiding Justice himself. As we said, a delay in a single case cannot be tolerated. The compliance submitted by the presiding justice incriminates him," the SC said.
Among those awaiting resolution were government charges leveled against the heirs of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his cronies which were filed way back in 1987.
Pardo noted that some of the cases had been submitted for decision as early as 10 years ago, but Garchitorena interminably sat on them.
The SC stressed that the same rule that mandates the regular trial courts to resolve cases within three months also applies to the Sandiganbayan.
"Since the Sandiganbayan acts more as a trial court, then for that classification of cases, the three-month reglamentary period applies," the ruling stated.
It added that Garchitorena "failed to devise an efficient recording and filing system to enable him to monitor the flow of cases and to manage their speedy and timely disposition. This is his duty in which he failed."
Of the 415 cases pending in the Sandiganbayan, 341 were with the first division, among them a case submitted in May 1990.
The Sandiganbayan justices were also reminded to strictly comply with a High Tribunal circular requiring trial courts to submit an inventory of cases twice a year.