Saturday, July 07, 2007 SC suspends 4 Cebu judges By Karlon N. Rama Sun.Star Staff Reporter
HE Supreme Court (SC) has ordered the immediate and indefinite preventive suspension of four Cebu municipal court judges for their alleged participation in the so-called marriage scam.
Chief Justice Reynato Puno also ordered the immediate filing of administrative charges for corruption, dishonesty, gross ignorance of the law, and deliberate violation of the law on marriage against Judges Rosabella Tormis, Gil Acosta, Anatalio Necesario and Edgemelo Rosales.
All four judges have not yet received formal notices of their suspension.
Initial information about the suspension came from an article posted on the High Tribunal’s website.
Lawyer Rullyn Garcia, the SC’s judicial supervisor for Central Visayas and who prepared the report used as basis for the suspension, also called a press conference at the sala of Regional Trial Court (RTC) Judge Geraldine Faith Econg last night.
He assuaged fears that the judges were singled out by their investigation, adding that the judicial audit is still ongoing and that all judges will be subjected to the inquiry as instructed by the Chief Justice.
Undue haste
Judge Necesario, in an interview with Sun.Star Cebu, expressed dismay over the suspension and he was not given the courtesy of being asked to explain.
He said he couldn’t help but feel that he and the other judges were singled out, adding that they at the MTCC weren’t the only ones who officiated weddings at the Palace of Justice.
Garcia refused to give reporters a copy of the suspension order or his report to the Chief Justice, saying he “didn’t want it to be misquoted.”
But based on the article the SC released, which Garcia said “relied heavily” on his findings, the charges stemmed from allegations that certain courts in Cebu City conduct marriages with undue haste and for an amount higher than the prescribed P300 marriage fee.
According to the article, the investigation showed that of the 643 marriage certifications examined, Judge Necesario solemnized 92 marriages under Article 34 of the Family Code from 2005 to 2007.
The provision grants that a marriage license is no longer required for parties who can declare, in a sworn affidavit, that they’ve been living together as man and wife for the past five years.
Figures
Based on the SC article, Judge Acosta handled 67 such marriages from 2003 to 2007, while Judges Tormis and Rosales handled 73 from 2005 to 2007 and 48 from 2006 to 2007, respectively.
But it’s not the actual number of solemnized marriages that got the High Court’s attention.
According to the report, what got investigators curious was how the figures from the court’s logbook were higher than the number of marriage certificate copies retained by the court and subsequently examined by Garcia’s team.
“What that shows is that we officiate weddings. What is wrong with that? That is allowed under the law. That is a service that judges provide,” Necesario said of the number.
As to the discrepancy, he said that courts are not bound to retain copies of the marriage certificates as these aren’t court dockets. These are turned over to the Office of the Civil Registrar for recording.
“If they bother to compare the entries in the (court) logbook and the entries with the local registrar, the figures will coincide,” he said.
Signatures
According to the article, the team also found that there were marriage licenses obtained from the local civil registrar in a place where neither of the contracting parties are residents.
“Likewise, there were discrepancies in the signatures of the local civil registrars of Barili and Liloan, Cebu appearing in the different marriage licenses purportedly obtained from their respective offices, suggesting that the signatures of local civil registrars were forged,” a portion of the article read.
But Judge Necesario said judges can’t be held responsible for supposed forgeries happening in other offices.
They cannot differentiate between some registrar’s original signature and a falsified one.
“We aren’t document examiners,” he said.
And as far as licenses issued by registrar to people not residing within their jurisdiction are concerned, Necesario said that too isn’t their lookout.
‘Only one’
“If the marriage license is there and its entries are certified to be true and correct, then judges will solemnize the ceremony in good faith,” he maintained.
Municipal Trial Court in Cities Judge Donato Navarro said he was surprised by the development.
“I’m still surprised by the extent of the investigation because all I know is only one court is involved in the scam. I’m also disappointed because three of the four judges are my friends,” he told Sun.Star Cebu when sought for comment last night.
RTC Executive Judge Fortunato de Gracia Jr. was glad the RTC judges were cleared of the allegations.
“The SC knows what it is doing. I expected that (none of the RTC judges will be suspended) because I know that the RTC judges were never involved in the scam. I know it because we live in the same house,” he said in a phone interview. (With KNT)
