Quezon City judge won’t handle Ivler case

A Quezon City judge has inhibited himself from appearing in the murder trial of road rage suspect Jason Ivler.

In an order dated August 5, Judge Bayani Vargas of Regional Trial Court Branch 219 said he would no longer handle the case so as not create any impression of partiality for either parties involved in the trial.

The court ordered the holding of another raffle so the trial can proceed in another court.

Ivler is accused of shooting Ebarle, son of a former Malacañang official, during a traffic altercation in November 2009 in Santolan, Quezon City.

The court said it chose to grant the inhibition “to further any suspicion of bias” on the part of the judge.

“ … There is no showing of acts or conduct of the judge clearly indicative of arbitrariness or prejudice before the latter can be branded the stigma of being biased and partial,” the order read.

Ivler had asked for Vargas’s inhibition from the case, citing alleged instances of bias such as the court’s alleged “dilly dallying” on the suspect’s appeal for hospital confinement for abdominal surgery.

Ivler’s mother, Marlene Pollard, on the other hand, had asked the court to reconsider its order citing her for indirect contempt and the imposition of a P20,000 fine after she challenged Vargas to a fist fight during a March 23 hearing.

Her appeal has been denied.

Pollard dared the judge to a fistfight, using words which the court said were “contemptuous.”

“These words are contemptuous per se which was even aired on national television, and if others do not see it that way, the court does not anymore know what is contemptuous,” Vargas said.

The court pointed out that even without Pollard’s comments on the incident, her actuations on that day were already “degrading.”