Junking of impeach case vs justice for plagiarism seen
Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo
The impeachment complaint against Supreme Court Associate Justice Mariano C. del Castillo is in danger of being dismissed with the 60-session day limit for the House of Representatives’ justice committee to submit the case to the plenary expected to lapse next week.
House Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II said that with only five session days left for the justice committee to act on the case and the head of the committee, Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr., busy with the Senate impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, it was possible that Del Castillo’s case would have to be dropped.
House leaders had previously hinted that they might just let the complaint against Del Castillo lapse after they succeeded in impeaching Corona late last year.
It would be difficult for Congress to tackle two impeachment cases at the same time, Gonzales said.
The impeachment case against Del Castillo was filed in December 2010 by the Malaya Lolas Organization.
Del Castillo was accused of plagiarizing the work of another judge, a foreign one, in his decision on the case of 70 “comfort women” who were seeking an apology and compensation from the Japanese government for sexual abuses they suffered during World War II.
In his reply to the justice committee, Del Castillo had said: “The alleged improper citation of certain works by foreign authors lacks both elements because the non-attribution was through inadvertence or an honest mistake, without malice or bad faith, and no prejudice resulted because what was cited in the said works were mere background information. Further, if we assume that it is possible to have judicial plagiarism, it does not have the extreme gravity requirement under Article 11, Section 2, of the Constitution.”
Originally posted: 11:26 pm | Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
