MANILA — The Supreme Court (SC) dismissed from the service a judge in Makati City for gross ignorance in connection with the decision on the murder case of 41-year old American national George Anikow.
In a 13-page promulgated on March 6 but was released to media Monday, the high court found Judge Winlove Dumayas of Makati RTC Branch 59 guilty of gross ignorance of the law and gross misconduct for rendering the decision without citing the required factual and legal bases and ignoring applicable jurisprudence.
The court imposed the penalty to Dumayas over the latter’s July 2, 2014 decision that downgraded the charge against the two accused in the case – Crispin de la Paz and Galicano Datu III – from murder to homicide.
Apart from dismissal, the court also ordered the forfeiture of his retirement benefits with prejudice to re-employment in government.
Dumayas is supposed to retire this year.
The SC also cited Dumayas’ sentence of prison term of four years, two months and one day to six years, which made the accused eligible for probation.
“He granted the separate applications for probation of Dela Paz and Datu, effectively sparing them from suffering the penalties they rightfully deserve. The pattern of said acts appears to be deliberate, calculated, and meant to unduly favor the accused,” the SC ruled.
The high court also pointed out that 13 other administrative cases were filed against Dumayas from 2003 to 2016.
“The Court takes the aforementioned incidents as evidence of respondent’s stubborn propensity not to follow the rule of law and procedure in rendering judgments and orders. This definitely has besmirched the integrity and seriously compromised the reputation, not only of his court, but more importantly, of the entire judicial system which he represents,” it added.
It held that Dumayas committed “oppressive disregard of the basic requirements of due process” and “misused powers” granted to him by law when he sentenced the accused only to homicide supposedly due to a finding of self-defense as mitigating circumstance even without the accused invoking and proving it in their defense.
“His complete disregard of settled rules and jurisprudence on self-defense and of the events that transpired after the first fight, despite the existence of testimonial and physical evidence to the contrary, in the appreciation of the privileged mitigating circumstance of incomplete self-defense casts serious doubt on his impartiality and good faith,” read the SC ruling.
Last 2012, the victim, who is reported to be connected with the United States (US) Embassy in Manila, was stabbed to death outside a posh subdivision in Makati City.
Anikow, a resident of No. 9 Soler St., Barangay Bel-Air succumbed to two stab wounds, one in the chest and another in the back. (PNA)
