Thursday, July 19, 2007 SC tells sacked psychic magistrate to stop bothering court
UNDAUNTED by his threats of "ungodly reprisals," Supreme Court (SC) magistrates on Wednesday ordered a dismissed Malabon judge to stop badgering them with phone calls and pleadings seeking a review of his case.
In a per curiam decision, the Court en banc resolved to deny the petitions and letters filed by Judge Florentino Floro Jr., with a warning that he can be held liable for indirect contempt should he persist in disregarding lawful orders of the Court.
The SC said Floro failed to present convincing arguments and substantial evidence to warrant a modification or reversal of its March 31, 2006 decision that ordered his relief as judge of Branch 73 of the Malabon Regional Trial Court (RTC) due to a "medically disabling condition of the mind that renders him unfit to discharge the functions of his office."
The high court further ordered to expunge his petitions from the records and ruled that no further pleadings from the former judge would be entertained, citing basic rules under the judicial system that litigations must end and terminate at some point.
"We wish to remind Judge Floro that the court cannot be swayed to modify or reverse its decision and various resolutions by inundating the ponente with numerous pleadings avowing ungodly reprisal as well as personal letters/telephone calls seeking audience with the court, if, as in this case, they are only in furtherance of repeating issues and arguments already passed upon by the court en banc's earlier decision and resolution," the SC said.
In the assailed decision of the SC, penned by Associate Justice Minita Chico-Nazario, Floro was separated from service due to his "delusional" tendencies, citing his admissions in several occasions that he decides his case with the guidance of his three dwarf friends whom he named Armand, Luis and Angel.
As a matter of equity, the Court resolved to award Floro back salaries, allowances and other economic benefits corresponding to three year.
Floro subsequently filed on separate dates three partial motions for reconsideration and supplements, which were all denied by the SC for lack of merit, considering the case closed and terminated, stating that no other pleadings will be entertained in the future.
In obvious disregard of this directive, Floro incessantly filed several more pleadings, including a Motion for Leave of Court to reinstate him as judge and a letter stating that he is willing to work under the offices of three justices or the Office of the Chief Justice, by way of reconciliation.
He also filed a supplement to his original petition/letter to reopen his case and to seek a new docket number to his original petition and to designate Senior Associate Justice Leonardo Quisumbing or Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Gregory Ong as new ponente of this "new" case.
Floro was sued by the Office of the Court Administrator which investigated about 13 administrative cases lodged against him by his own judicial staff. The SC found him guilty of seven out of 13 administrative charges and ordered him to pay the amount of P40,000 as penalty.
In a motion for reconsideration, in which pages of stories about himself were interspersed, Floro alleged that the six government doctors who examined him counterfeited his intelligence quotient and wrongfully declared him as mentally impaired.
He asked that an impartial panel of doctors who are experts who are likewise gifted to assess his psychic powers should be commissioned to examine him to determine his true mental state.
The beleaguered judge said that the amended Rule 140 in the Rules of Court never included weirdness, healing, psychic phenomena and the like as grounds for discipline.
"Insanity is, but respondent has never been declared insane," he said, noting that his gift "dwell in the realm of both religious and religious belief, free exercise and expression or parapsychology, and beyond the four corners of medicine, psychiatry and psychology."
Floro - who has repeatedly cited in his motion that was the brightest in his class and graduated with honors from Ateneo de Manila and even landed 12th in the 1983 Bar exams - said the SC should not allow itself to be dictated upon by in a proceeding to remove judges based on the medical incapacity of doctors, whose claims are mere hearsay evidence and thus inadmissible.
Dr. Celeste Vista in her report to the SC cited that despite Floros impressive educational background, there is "impairment in reality testing which is an indicator of a psychotic process, such that, cultural beliefs in dwarfs, psychic and paranormal phenomena and divine gifts of healing have become incorporated in a delusional system, that it has interfered and tainted his occupational and social functioning."
But Floro said he said he could not be held liable for Vista's emotional incapability to accept his "gift" with empirical certainty.
Among the "phenomena" that he supposedly predicted were the failure of former President Joseph Estrada to finish his term, the 2001 terrorist attack at the World Trade Center in the US and the July 2001 fire that gutted the Malabon Hall of Justice, except his own sala, which he predicted on July 18, 1999.
He also mentioned his ability to inflict pain via energy transfer or to prevent forthcoming pains on a specific person during Fridays, on the condition that the person should alter his ways, lest they be punished, and his ability to see his little friends." (ECV/Sunnex)
