Wednesday, September 05, 2007 Six months without pay, P10T fine ordered by SC on Cebu RTC’s Donato Navarro By Karlon N. Rama & Katrina N. Tabanao Sun.Star Staff Reporters
THE Supreme Court (SC) ordered a municipal trial court judge suspended from work for six months and fined P10,000 for gross ignorance of the law or procedure and for unjust delay in rendering a decision.
Judge Donato Navarro is also “warned that a commission of any further administrative offense will be dealt with more severely.”
Navarro has already been precluded from hearing new cases until his backlog at the 6th branch of the Municipal Trial Court in Cities (MTCC) is cleared.
Navarro, in a phone interview, said the penalty is too much.
“Grabe ra kaayo,” he said.
He will be filing a motion for reconsideration today before the High Tribunal.
He argued that the suspension deals with a rule that until now is ambiguous.
The penalty, based on the Aug. 28 decision penned by Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales for the Second Division, stemmed from an administrative complaint filed against Navarro last March 7, 2005 by Sandra Mino of Cebu City.
Navarro made headlines recently for making public the alleged marriage scam at the Palace of Justice. His expose resulted in the preventive suspension of four of his colleagues at the MTCC.
The administrative complaint accused Navarro of gross inexcusable negligence for his alleged failure to issue a warrant of arrest within the period prescribed, for an attempted homicide case against Allan Arcilla.
The homicide case had been with Navarro since Oct. 21, 2003 but no warrant had been issued “despite repeated requests for the issuance.”
Based on the complaint, Navarro, 97 days after the case reached his sala, instead ruled that Arcilla should only be charged for grave threats because there was “no probable cause to believe that the accused had acted with intent to kill, not having persisted in his threat against the offended party.”
In the same order, dated Feb. 5, 2004, Navarro remanded the case to the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor “so that the information may be amended to reflect the proper crime.”
Mino filed a motion for reconsideration, saying they were not given a chance to be heard before the order was issued.
Through her lawyers, she argued that the prosecutor’s office had already ruled on the existence of probable cause.
In fact, she said, it did so after conducting a preliminary investigation whose findings were not appealed before the Office of the Regional State Prosecutor or the Department of Justice.
Mino’s camp further argued that the order was illegal since it had the effect of Navarro conducting his own preliminary investigation of the case.
On June 3, 2004, after Mino filed the motion for reconsideration against the February order, Navarro answered back by refuting the arguments of the prosecution.
He, however, also excused himself from the case, saying the matter was better left to another court.
Navarro, in the order, insisted that he had the authority to make a determination of probable cause. Not only that, he had a duty to do so before issuing a warrant.
Mino, in her complaint to the High Court, said this wasn’t the first time Navarro went “trifling with the findings of the Office of the City Prosecutor.”
She said Navarro, in criminal case 122800-R (People of the Philippines v. J. Walter Palacio), also withheld the issuance of a warrant of arrest and remanded the attempted homicide case to the prosecutor’s office for downgrading to grave threats.
Navarro answered the charge in a letter-comment dated Sept. 19, 2005, saying the determination of probable cause is no longer considered the exclusive domain of prosecutors.
“It was important for the respondent that the prosecution show clear probable cause for the crime charged because the effect of doing so would be for the respondent to issue a warrant of arrest. The liberty of the accused is at stake,” he said.
The Office of the Court Administrator (OCA), in an evaluation report dated May 8, 2006, confirmed that an MTCC judge is indeed required to evaluate the resolution of the prosecutor and its supporting evidence.
However, it said, the evaluation must be made within 10 days from the filing of the complaint or information.
Moreover, Navarro should not have downgraded Mino’s case.
According to the Rules of Court, the OCA said the judge could have dismissed the case outright, issue a warrant of arrest and proceed with the hearing or require the prosecutor to show evidence of probable cause.
The OCA then re-docketed Mino’s complaint as a formal administrative matter, hence the SC ruling.
In an interview, Navarro said that under Rule 112 of Section 6A, of which the SC ruled that he is ignorant, it is provided that the judge can dismiss a case when there is no probable cause or if probable cause is present, he can order the prosecutor to present additional evidence.
“It does not state what a judge will do in a situation where a judge finds cause to charge the respondent for another offense other than the one stipulated in the information filed,” he said.
Since the rule is silent on this scenario, he said the judge can exercise his discretion.
Navarro also disclosed that this rule is ambiguous to other judges.
