SC asks for Judicial courtesy

MANILA, Philippines -  The Supreme Court (SC) yesterday appealed for “judicial courtesy” even as it reminded the House of Representatives justice committee that it has already cleared Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo on the same plagiarism charges being used in the impeachment proceedings against him.

“That is an issue validly brought to the court and which the court duly deliberated upon,” court spokesman Midas Marquez told The STAR, citing the ruling in October last year that junked allegations of plagiarism, twisting of cited materials and gross neglect against Del Castillo for lack of merit.

“I hope they take into consideration the court’s ruling when they decide on the impeachment complaint against Justice Del Castillo,” the SC spokesman appealed.

Marquez said that although any decision on the impeachment case lies solely with the House justice committee, it could be subject to review of the high court.

“Let’s see first what they will do. For as long as there’s no order or resolution from them yet and it is not brought to the court formally, the court can’t act,” he explained.

Voting 10-2, the Supreme Court had adopted the findings of its committee on ethics and ethical standards, which investigated the plagiarism issue, that the lack of attribution in the ruling was a result of “accidental removal of proper attributions to the three authors” by Del Castillo’s legal researcher while drafting the decision in the computer.

It also accepted the explanation of Del Castillo that there was “no malicious intent to appropriate another’s work as our own.”

“The mistake of Justice Del Castillo’s researcher is that, after the justice had decided what texts, passages and citations were to be retained, including those from (authors), and when she was already cleaning up her work and deleting all subject tags, she unintentionally deleted the footnotes that went with such tags – with disastrous effect,” the Court explained.

“On occasion, judges and justices have mistakenly cited the wrong sources, failed to use quotation marks, inadvertently omitted necessary information from footnotes or endnotes. But these do not, in every case, amount to misconduct. Only errors that are tainted with fraud, corruption or malice are subject of disciplinary action,” it stressed.

The SC also junked as a “mystery” the allegation of lawyers of petitioners in the case led by UP professor Harry Roque Jr. that the magistrate twisted the points from the sources to justify his ruling.

“Since the attributions were accidentally deleted, it is impossible for any person reading the decision to connect the same to the works of those authors as to conclude that in writing the decision Justice Del Castillo ‘twisted’ their intended messages,” the Court pointed out.

With this, the Court opted not to penalize even the legal researcher of Del Castillo.

Earlier this year, the House committee voted 11-10 to find the impeachment complaint sufficient in form. It was reported that the committee chaired by Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr. is again divided in deliberating on the substance of the complaint.

Isabela Rep. Giorgidi Aggabao said the Tupas committee should dismiss the impeachment complaint for lack of substance. He added that plagiarism is not an impeachable offense.