Jamsani-Rodriguez V Ong

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 14

10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

CASES REPORTED
SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED

____________________

A.M. No. 08-19-SB-J. April 12, 2011.*

ASSISTANT SPECIAL PROSECUTOR III ROHERMIA J.


JAMSANI-RODRIGUEZ, complainant, vs. JUSTICES
GREGORY S. ONG, JOSE R. HERNANDEZ, and
RODOLFO A. PONFERRADA, SANDIGANBAYAN,
respondents.

Courts; Sandiganbayan; Collegial court Justices cannot


lightly regard the legal requirement for all of them to sit together
as members of a Division in the trial and determination of a case
or cases assigned thereto.—We deny the plea of Justice Ong and
Justice Hernandez for complete exoneration, considering what we
held in the Decision, which we reiterate hereunder, as follows:
Respondent Justices cannot lightly regard the legal requirement
for all of them to sit together as members of the Fourth Division
“in the trial and determination of a case or cases assigned
thereto.” The information and evidence upon which the Fourth
Division would base any deci-

_______________

* EN BANC.

2 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED

Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

sions or other judicial actions in the cases tried before it must be


made directly available to each and every one of its members
during the proceedings. This necessitates the equal and full
https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 1/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

participation of each member in the trial and adjudication of their


cases. It is simply not enough, therefore, that the three members
of the Fourth Division were within hearing and communicating
distance of one another at the hearings in question, as they
explained in hindsight, because even in those circumstances not
all of them sat together in session.
Same; Same; The variance in the responsibilities of
respondent Justices as Members of their Division compel the
differentiation of their individual liabilities.—We hold to be not
well taken the urging of Justice Ong that the penalty imposed
upon him be similar to that meted upon Justice Hernandez. The
variance in the responsibilities of respondent Justices as
Members of their Division compel the differentiation of their
individual liabilities. Justice Ong, as the Chairperson, was the
head of the Division under the Internal Rules of the
Sandiganbayan, being the most senior Member, and, as such, he
possessed and wielded powers of supervision, direction, and
control over the conduct of the proceedings of the Division. This
circumstance alone provided sufficient justification to treat
Justice Ong differently from the other respondents. Moreover, we
have noted in the Decision that in the exercise of his powers as
Chairman of the Fourth Division, Justice Ong exuded an
unexpectedly dismissive attitude towards the valid objections of
the complainant, and steered his Division into the path of
procedural irregularity; and wittingly failed to guarantee that
proceedings of the Division that he chaired came within the
bounds of substantive and procedural rules. To be sure, Justice
Hernandez and Justice Ponferrada did not direct and control how
the proceedings of the Division were to be conducted. Their not
being responsible for the direction and control of the running of
the Division and their having relied without malice on the Justice
Ong’s direction and control should not be reproved as much as
Justice Ong’s misconduct. Hence, their responsibility and liability
as Members of the Division were properly diminished.

JOINT MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION and


MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION of a decision of
the Supreme Court.
The facts are stated in the resolution of the Court.

VOL. 648, APRIL 12, 2011 3


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

RESOLUTION
BERSAMIN, J.:

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 2/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

We resolve: (a) the Joint Motion for Reconsideration


dated September 14, 2010 filed by respondents
Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Gregory S. Ong (Justice
Ong) and Associate Justice Jose R. Hernandez (Justice
Hernandez); and (b) the Motion for Reconsideration (of the
Honorable Court’s Decision Dated 1 September) dated
September 15, 2010 of the complainant.
Both motions seek the reconsideration of the Decision
rendered on August 24, 2010, albeit on different grounds.
Through the Decision, we found and held Justice Ong
and Justice Hernandez liable for simple misconduct, and
disposed against them and Associate Justice Rodolfo A.
Ponferrada (Justice Ponferrada), as follows:

1. ASSOCIATE JUSTICE GREGORY S. ONG is ordered to


pay a fine of P15,000.00, with a stern warning that a repetition of
the same or similar offense shall be dealt with more severely;
2. ASSOCIATE JUSTICE JOSE R. HERNANDEZ is
admonished with a warning that a repetition of the same or
similar offenses shall be dealt with more severely; and
3. ASSOCIATE JUSTICE RODOLFO A. PONFERRADA is
warned to be more cautious about the proper procedure to be
taken in proceedings before his court.1

A brief account of the factual antecedents is first given.


The complainant, then an Assistant Special Prosecutor
III in the Office of the Special Prosecutor, filed an affidavit-
complaint dated October 23, 2008 charging Justice Ong,
Justice Hernandez and Justice Ponferrada, as the
Members of the Fourth Division of the Sandiganbayan
with: (a) grave

_______________

1 Decision, p. 26.

4 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

misconduct, conduct unbecoming a Justice, and conduct


grossly prejudicial to the interest of the service (grounded
on their failing to hear cases as a collegial body during the
scheduled sessions of the Fourth Division held in Davao
City on April 24-28, 2006, with Justice Ong hearing cases
by himself and Justice Hernandez and Justice Ponferrada
hearing other cases together; and on their having

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 3/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

unreasonably flexed their judicial muscle when she


objected to the procedure); (b) falsification of public
documents (grounded on their issuance of orders relative to
the hearings in Davao City, signed by all three of them,
that made it appear as if all of them had been present
during the particular hearing acting as a collegial body,
when in truth they were not); (c) improprieties in the
hearing of cases that amounted to gross abuse of judicial
authority and grave misconduct (grounded on Justice Ong
and Justice Hernandez’s making the following intemperate
and discriminatory utterances during the hearings of their
Division in Cebu City sometime in September 2006), to wit:

(a) We are playing Gods here, we will do what we want to do, your
contempt is already out, we fined you eighteen thousand pesos,
even if you will appeal, by that time I will be there, Justice of the
Supreme Court.’2;
(b) You are better than Director Somido? Are you better than
Director Chua? Are you here to supervise Somido? Your office is
wasting funds for one prosecutor who is doing nothing.’3;
(c) Just because your son is always nominated by the JBC to
Malacañang, you are acting like that! Do not forget

_______________

2 Utterance made by Justice Ong in open court against the


complainant.
3 Utterance made by Justice Hernandez in open court against
Prosecutor Hazelina Tujan-Militante, who was then merely observing the
trial proceedings from the gallery.

VOL. 648, APRIL 12, 2011 5


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

that the brain of the child follows that of their (sic)


mother’4; and
(d) Justice Ong often asked lawyers from which law schools they had
graduated, and frequently inquired whether the law school in
which Justice Hernandez had studied and from which he had
graduated was better than his (Justice Ong’s) own alma mater.

and (d) manifest partiality and gross ignorance of the


law (grounded on the fact that Criminal Case No. 25801,
entitled People v. Puno, was dismissed upon a demurrer to
evidence filed by the accused upon a finding that the
assailed contracts subject of the criminal case had never

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 4/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

been perfected contrary to the evidence of the Prosecution,


the dismissal order being signed by all three respondents).
In the Decision of August 24, 2010, we explained as
follows

A.
Respondents’ Violation of the Provisions of PD 1606
and Revised Internal Rules of the Sandiganbayan
xxx xxx xxx
We find that the procedure adopted by respondent Justices for
their provincial hearings was in blatant disregard of PD 1606, as
amended, the Rules of Court, and the Revised Internal Rules of
the Sandiganbayan. Even worse, their adoption of the procedure
arbitrarily denied the benefit of a hearing before a duly
constituted Division of the Sandiganbayan to all the affected
litigants, including the State, thereby rendering the integrity and
efficacy of their proceedings open to serious challenge on the
ground that a hearing before a duly constituted Division of the
Sandiganbayan was of the very essence of the constitutionally
guaranteed right to due process of law.

_______________

4 Utterance made by Justice Hernandez in open court against Atty.


Pangalangan, father of former U.P. College of Law Dean Raul C. Pangalangan.

6 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

Judges are not common individuals whose gross errors men


forgive and time forgets. They are expected to have more than just
a modicum acquaintance with the statutes and procedural rules.
For this reason alone, respondent Justices’ adoption of the
irregular procedure cannot be dismissed as a mere deficiency in
prudence or as a lapse in judgment on their part, but should be
treated as simple misconduct, which is to be distinguished from
either gross misconduct or gross ignorance of the law. The
respondent Justices were not liable for gross misconduct—defined
as the transgression of some established or definite rule of action,
more particularly, unlawful behavior or gross negligence, or the
corrupt or persistent violation of the law or disregard of well-
known legal rules—considering that the explanations they have
offered herein, which the complainant did not refute, revealed
that they strove to maintain their collegiality by holding their
separate hearings within sight and hearing distance of one
another. Neither were they liable for gross ignorance of the law,
which must be based on reliable evidence to show that the act

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 5/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

complained of was ill-motivated, corrupt, or inspired by an


intention to violate the law, or in persistent disregard of well-
known legal rules; on the contrary, none of these circumstances
was attendant herein, for the respondent Justices have
convincingly shown that they had not been ill-motivated or
inspired by an intention to violate any law or legal rule in
adopting the erroneous procedure, but had been seeking, instead,
to thereby expedite their disposition of cases in the provinces.
Nonetheless, it remains that the respondent Justices did not
ensure that their proceedings accorded with the provisions of the
law and procedure. Their insistence that they adopted the
procedure in order to expedite the hearing of provincial cases is
not a sufficient reason to entirely exonerate them, even if no
malice or corruption motivated their adoption of the procedure.
They could have seen that their procedure was flawed, and that
the flaw would prevent, not promote, the expeditious disposition
of the cases by precluding their valid adjudication due to the
nullifying taint of the irregularity. They knew as well that the
need to expedite their cases, albeit recommended, was not the
chief objective of judicial trials. As the Court has reminded judges
in State Prosecutors v. Muro, viz.:
Although a speedy determination of an action or
proceeding implies a speedy trial, it should be borne
in mind that speed is not the chief objective of a trial.

VOL. 648, APRIL 12, 2011 7


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

Careful and deliberate consideration for the


administration of justice is more important than a
race to end the trial. A genuine respect for the rights
of all parties, thoughtful consideration before ruling
on important questions, and a zealous regard for the
just administration of law are some of the qualities of
a good trial judge, which are more important than a
reputation for hasty disposal of cases.
xxx xxx xxx
What is required on the part of judges is objectivity. An
independent judiciary does not mean that judges can
resolve specific disputes entirely as they please. There are
both implicit and explicit limits on the way judges perform
their role. Implicit limits include accepted legal values and
the explicit limits are substantive and procedural rules of
law.
The judge, even when he is free, is still not wholly
free. He is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 6/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own


ideal of beauty or goodness. He is to draw his
inspiration from consecrated principles. He is not to
yield to spasmodic sentiment, to vague and
unregulated benevolence. He is to exercise a
discretion informed by tradition, methodized by
analogy, disciplined by system, and subordinate to
the “primordial necessity of order in the social life.”
Relevantly, we do not consider the respondent Justices’ signing
of the orders issued during the flawed proceedings as a form of
falsification or dishonesty, in that they thereby made it appear
that they had all been physically present when the truth was
different. Such act merely ensued from the flawed proceedings
and cannot be treated as a separate offense.
B.
Unbecoming Conduct of Justice Ong and Justice
Hernandez
The Court approves the Court Administrator’s finding and
recommendation that no evidence supported the complainant’s
charge that Justice Ong and Justice Hernandez had uttered the
improper and intemperate statements attributed to them.

8 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

A review of the transcripts of the stenographic notes for the


hearings in which the offensive statements were supposedly
uttered by them has failed to substantiate the complainant’s
charge. In the absence of a clear showing to the contrary, the
Court must accept such transcripts as the faithful and true record
of the proceedings, because they bear the certification of
correctness executed by the stenographers who had prepared
them.
Even so, Justice Ong and Justice Hernandez admitted
randomly asking the counsels appearing before them from which
law schools they had graduated, and their engaging during the
hearings in casual conversation about their respective law
schools. They thereby publicized their professional qualifications
and manifested a lack of the requisite humility demanded of
public magistrates. Their doing so reflected a vice of self-conceit.
We view their acts as bespeaking their lack of judicial
temperament and decorum, which no judge worthy of the judicial
robes should avoid especially during their performance of judicial
functions. They should not exchange banter or engage in playful
teasing of each other during trial proceedings (no matter how
good-natured or even if meant to ease tension, as they want us to

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 7/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

believe). Judicial decorum demands that they behave with dignity


and act with courtesy towards all who appear before their court.
Indeed, Section 6, Canon 6 of the New Code of Judicial
Conduct for the Philippine Judiciary clearly enjoins that:
Section 6. Judges shall maintain order and
decorum in all proceedings before the court and be
patient, dignified and courteous in relation to
litigants, witnesses, lawyers and others with whom
the judge deals in an official capacity. Judges shall
require similar conduct of legal representatives, court staff
and others subject to their influence, direction or control.
We point out that publicizing professional qualifications or
boasting of having studied in and graduated from certain law
schools, no matter how prestigious, might have even revealed, on
the part of Justice Ong and Justice Hernandez, their bias for or
against some lawyers. Their conduct was impermissible,
consequently, for Section 3, Canon 4 of the New Code of Judicial
Conduct for the Philippine Judiciary, demands that judges avoid
situations that may reasonably give rise to the suspicion or
appearance of favoritism or

8 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

partiality in their personal relations with individual members of


the legal profession who practice regularly in their courts.
Judges should be dignified in demeanor, and refined in speech.
In performing their judicial duties, they should not manifest bias
or prejudice by word or conduct towards any person or group on
irrelevant grounds. It is very essential that they should live up to
the high standards their noble position on the Bench demands.
Their language must be guarded and measured, lest the best of
intentions be misconstrued. In this regard, Section 3, Canon 5 of
the New Code of Judicial Conduct for the Philippine Judiciary,
mandates judges to carry out judicial duties with appropriate
consideration for all persons, such as the parties, witnesses,
lawyers, court staff, and judicial colleagues, without
differentiation on any irrelevant ground, immaterial to the proper
performance of such duties.
In view of the foregoing, Justice Ong and Justice Hernandez
were guilty of unbecoming conduct, which is defined as improper
performance. Unbecoming conduct “applies to a broader range of
transgressions of rules not only of social behavior but of ethical
practice or logical procedure or prescribed method.”
C.
Respondent Justices Not Guilty of Manifest Partiality

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 8/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

The charge of manifest partiality for issuing the resolution


granting the demurrer to evidence of the accused in Criminal
Case No. 25801 is dismissed. As already mentioned, this Court
upheld the assailed resolution on June 5, 2006 in G.R. No. 171116
by declaring the petition of the Office of the Special Prosecutor
assailing such dismissal to have “failed to sufficiently show that
the Sandiganbayan had committed any reversible error in the
questioned judgment to warrant the exercise by this Court of its
discretionary appellate jurisdiction.”

In their Joint Motion for Reconsideration, Justice Ong


and Justice Hernandez make it clear that they:

[A]ccept with all humility, and therefore, will no longer contest


the Honorable Court’s finding that the proceedings they had
adopted in their provincial hearings fell short of what the
provisions of the law and rules require. For such shortcoming,
respondents Ong and Hernandez can only express their regret
and apology.

10

10 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

Nonetheless, Justice Ong and Justice Hernandez pray


for exoneration, contending that they are not liable for
simple misconduct despite the irregularity of their conduct
for the simple reason that, as the Decision has indicated,
they “have not been ill-motivated or inspired by an
intention to violate any law or legal rules in adopting the
erroneous procedure, but had been seeking, instead, to
thereby expedite their disposition of cases in the
provinces;” their actions were not willful in character or
motivated by a “premeditated, obstinate or intentional
purpose;” or even if their actions might be “irregular,
wrongful, or improper,” such could not be characterized as
simple misconduct necessitating administrative sanction.
Also, Justice Ong and Justice Hernandez posit that they
cannot be made accountable for unbecoming conduct
because they admittedly posed questions on the law schools
of origin of the counsel appearing before them; that their
propounding the queries, per se, did not justify a finding of
unbecoming conduct on their part considering that they
thereby never derided any law school or belittled the
capabilities of lawyers on the basis of their school
affiliations, nor exhibited bias for or against any lawyer
based on their alma mater.

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 9/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

In the alternative, Justice Ong prays that the sanction


imposed upon him be made equal to that meted on Justice
Hernandez. He “implores the Honorable Court to re-
examine the propriety of imposing a different and heavier
penalty against him and take into due consideration its
own pronouncement in its decision that ‘the
Sandiganbayan is a collegial court,’ and ‘in a collegial court,
the members act on the basis of consensus or majority
rule.’ ”
For her part, the complainant insists that respondent
Justices be found guilty of all administrative charges made
against them; and that the penalties or chastisement be
increased to be commensurate to their infractions.
11

VOL. 648, APRIL 12, 2011 11


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

Ruling
Finding the arguments of the complainant to be matters
that the Court fully dealt with and discussed in the
Decision, and there being no other substantial matters
raised by her, we deny her Motion for Reconsideration (of
the Honorable Court’s Decision Dated 1 September).
We deny the plea of Justice Ong and Justice Hernandez
for complete exoneration, considering what we held in the
Decision, which we reiterate hereunder, as follows:

“Respondent Justices cannot lightly regard the legal


requirement for all of them to sit together as members of the
Fourth Division “in the trial and determination of a case or cases
assigned thereto.” The information and evidence upon which the
Fourth Division would base any decisions or other judicial actions
in the cases tried before it must be made directly available to each
and every one of its members during the proceedings. This
necessitates the equal and full participation of each member in
the trial and adjudication of their cases. It is simply not enough,
therefore, that the three members of the Fourth Division were
within hearing and communicating distance of one another at the
hearings in question, as they explained in hindsight, because even
in those circumstances not all of them sat together in session.
Indeed, the ability of the Fourth Division to function as a
collegial body became impossible when not all of the members sat
together during the trial proceedings. The internal rules of the
Sandiganbayan spotlight an instance of such impossibility.
Section 2, Rule VII of the Revised Internal Rules of the
Sandiganbayan expressly requires that rulings on oral motions

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 10/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

made or objections raised in the course of the trial proceedings or


hearings are be made by the Chairman of the Division. Obviously,
the rule cannot be complied with because Justice Ong, the
Chairman, did not sit in the hearing of the cases heard by the
other respondents. Neither could the other respondents properly
and promptly contribute to the rulings of Justice Ong in the
hearings before him.
Moreover, the respondents’ non-observance of collegiality
contravened the very purpose of trying criminal cases cognizable
by Sandiganbayan before a Division of all three Justices.
Although

12

12 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

there are criminal cases involving public officials and employees


triable before single-judge courts, PD 1606, as amended, has
always required a Division of three Justices (not one or two) to try
the criminal cases cognizable by the Sandiganbayan, in view of
the accused in such cases holding higher rank or office than those
charged in the former cases. The three Justices of a Division,
rather than a single judge, are naturally expected to exert keener
judiciousness and to apply broader circumspection in trying and
deciding such cases. The tighter standard is due in part to the fact
that the review of convictions is elevated to the Supreme Court
generally via the discretionary mode of petition for review on
certiorari under Rule 45, Rules of Court, which eliminates issues
of fact, instead of via ordinary appeal set for the former kind of
cases (whereby the convictions still undergo intermediate review
before ultimately reaching the Supreme Court, if at all).
In GMCR, Inc. v. Bell Telecommunication Philippines, Inc., the
Court delved on the nature of a collegial body, and how the act of
a single member, though he may be its head, done without the
participation of the others, cannot be considered the act of the
collegial body itself. There, the question presented was whether
Commissioner Simeon Kintanar, as chairman of the National
Telecommunications Commission (NTC), could alone act in behalf
of and bind the NTC, given that the NTC had two other
commissioners as members. The Court ruled:
First. We hereby declare that the NTC is a collegial body
requiring a majority vote out of the three members of
the commission in order to validly decide a case or
any incident therein. Corollarily, the vote alone of the
chairman of the commission, as in this case, the vote
of Commissioner Kintanar, absent the required
concurring vote coming from the rest of the

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 11/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

membership of the commission to at least arrive at a


majority decision, is not sufficient to legally render
an NTC order, resolution or decision.
Simply put, Commissioner Kintanar is not the National
Telecommunications Commission. He alone does not speak
for and in behalf of the NTC. The NTC acts through a three-
man body, and the three members of the commission
each has one vote to cast in every deliberation
concerning a case or any incident therein that is
subject to the jurisdic-

13

VOL. 648, APRIL 12, 2011 13


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

tion of the NTC. When we consider the historical milieu in


which the NTC evolved into the quasi-judicial agency it is
now under Executive Order No. 146 which organized the
NTC as a three-man commission and expose the illegality of
all memorandum circulars negating the collegial nature of
the NTC under Executive Order No. 146, we are left with
only one logical conclusion: the NTC is a collegial body and
was a collegial body even during the time when it was
acting as a one-man regime.
The foregoing observations made in GMCR, Inc. apply to the
situation of respondent Justices as members of the Fourth
Division. It is of no consequence, then, that no malice or corrupt
motive impelled respondent Justices into adopting the flawed
procedure. As responsible judicial officers, they ought to have
been well aware of the indispensability of collegiality to the valid
conduct of their trial proceedings.”

As to the argument of Justice Ong and Justice


Hernandez against this Court’s finding of unbecoming
conduct on their part, the matter has been fully addressed
in the Decision of August 24, 2010.
We hold to be not well taken the urging of Justice Ong
that the penalty imposed upon him be similar to that
meted upon Justice Hernandez.
The variance in the responsibilities of respondent
Justices as Members of their Division compel the
differentiation of their individual liabilities. Justice Ong, as
the Chairperson, was the head of the Division under the
Internal Rules of the Sandiganbayan, being the most senior
Member, and, as such, he possessed and wielded powers of
supervision, direction, and control over the conduct of the
proceedings of the Division. This circumstance alone

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 12/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

provided sufficient justification to treat Justice Ong


differently from the other respondents.
Moreover, we have noted in the Decision that in the
exercise of his powers as Chairman of the Fourth Division,
Justice Ong exuded an unexpectedly dismissive attitude
towards the valid objections of the complainant, and
steered his Division into the path of procedural
irregularity; and wittingly failed
14

14 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

to guarantee that proceedings of the Division that he


chaired came within the bounds of substantive and
procedural rules. To be sure, Justice Hernandez and
Justice Ponferrada did not direct and control how the
proceedings of the Division were to be conducted. Their not
being responsible for the direction and control of the
running of the Division and their having relied without
malice on the Justice Ong’s direction and control should not
be reproved as much as Justice Ong’s misconduct. Hence,
their responsibility and liability as Members of the Division
were properly diminished.
WHEREFORE, the Motion for Reconsideration (of the
Honorable Court’s Decision Dated 1 September) dated
September 15, 2010 of complainant Assistant Special
Prosecutor III Rohermia J. Jamsani-Rodriguez; and the
Joint Motion for Reconsideration dated September 14, 2010
of Associate Justice Gregory S. Ong and Associate Justice
Jose R. Hernandez are denied for lack of merit.
SO ORDERED.

Corona (C.J.), Carpio, Caprio-Morales, Velasco, Jr.,


Brion, Del Castillo, Villarama, Jr. and Sereno, JJ., concur.
Nachura, J., I maintain my original dissent.
Leonardo-De Castro and Peralta, JJ., No Part.
Abad, J., I maintain my dissenting vote.
Perez, J., No part. Acted on matter as Court
Administrator.
Mendoza, J., I maintain my earlier vote.

Motions denied.

Notes.—The ponente in a collegiate court should remain


a member thereof at the time his ponencia is promulgated
because, at any time before that, he has the privilege of

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 13/14
10/30/23, 11:42 PM SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED VOLUME 648

changing his opinion for the consideration of his colleagues.


As a

15

VOL. 648, APRIL 12, 2011 15


Jamsani-Rodriguez vs. Ong

rule, his recommendations are accepted in recognition of


the special study he is supposed to have made of the case
after his designation as its ponente. It is important that he
be incumbent at the time the decision is promulgated, in
the event he may want to make last-minute changes
therein with the approval of the other members. Obviously,
he cannot exercise this privilege if he is no longer in office.
(Consolidated Bank and Trust Corporation (Solidbank) vs.
Intermediate Appellate Court, 189 SCRA 433 [1990])
Sessions of the Sandiganbayan, whether en banc or
division, shall be held in its principal office in the
Metropolitan Manila where it shall try and determine all
cases filed with it. (Marcos vs. Sandiganbayan, 297 SCRA
95 [1998])

——o0o——

© Copyright 2023 Central Book Supply, Inc. All rights reserved.

https://www.central.com.ph/sfsreader/session/0000018b8140beb80e732baa000d00d40059004a/t/?o=False 14/14

You might also like