Judge who had De Lima jailed inhibits self

The Muntinlupa City judge who was the first to issue an arrest warrant against Sen. Leila de Lima, leading to her incarceration at Camp Crame in February 2017, has inhibited herself from the lawmaker’s illegal drugs case.

At the same time, Muntinlupa Regional Trial Court Branch 204 Judge Juanita Guerrero also canceled De Lima’s scheduled arraignment on Jan. 24 as she ordered the reraffle of the case to another branch.

De Lima is accused of drug trading but prosecutors have filed a motion to amend the charge to conspiracy to commit drug trading.

In November, the senator challenged Guerrero’s partiality and independence, citing her alleged display of undue haste to ensure her detention based on the testimonies of drug convicts during a House committee inquiry last year into the alleged proliferation of drugs at the national penitentiary while De Lima was justice secretary.

In her order signed Jan. 4, Guerrero maintained that mere imputation of bias or partiality without any proof of evidence was not a ground for inhibition.

But she said she was voluntarily doing so “in order not to cast doubt on [my] integrity and impartiality … and to disabuse the mind of the accused and her counsels who have expressed serious doubts on [my] objectivity in resolving this case.”

De Lima, in her motion, urged Guerrero to suspend the proceedings in her case pending the resolution of her motion for reconsideration in the Supreme Court.

Guerrero, however, said she had to continue the hearings in the absence of a temporary restraining order or writ of preliminary injunction from the high court. —With a report from Dexter Cabalza