SC slaps judge Sarmiento with P15,000 fine

The Supreme Court has slapped a P15,000 fine on Judge Olegario Sarmiento Jr. for gross ignorance of the law when he allowed a murder suspect to post bail without first conducting a hearing.

Sarmiento, who presides the Regional Trial Court Branch 24, allowed Anthony John Apura to post a P20,000 bail after he remanded the murder case to the Cebu City Prosecutor's Office for preliminary investigation.

Apura, a member of the controversial Alpha Kappa Rho fraternity, was one of the suspects in the shooting to death of Mark James Enriquez along Archbishop Reyes Avenue on July 19, 2003.

He was arrested on August 1, 2003 when he went to the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group with his father to clear his name.

The police brought him to the prosecutor's office and implicated him in the killing of 19-year-old Enriquez, a business management student of the University of San Carlos. Judge Aproniano Taypin then issued a warrant for his arrest and committed him to jail.

Aside from Apura, other suspects in Enriquez's killing are Sherwin Que, Alvin Taggart Alvez, Junjun Rivera and some unidentified companions.

Apura's lawyer filed a motion to dismiss the case before the court on grounds that no preliminary investigation was conducted on his client before the filing of the information of the case.

Instead of granting the motion, Sarmiento just remanded the case to the city prosecutor's office for preliminary hearing, and allowed Apura to post bail. Sarmiento, however, issued a hold-departure order against the suspect.

The High Court ruled that the absence of a preliminary investigation did not justify Apura's release because the defect did not nullify the information and the warrant of arrest against him.

"In fine, Sarmiento's release on bail of Apura, without priorly conducting a hearing for the purpose, betrays his gross ignorance of the law, it being settled that where the law involved is simple and elementary, lack of observance thereof constitutes gross ignorance of the law," the SC ruling reads.

Although the maximum penalty of gross ignorance of the law is a P40,000 fine, Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales, who penned the decision, appreciated as mitigating in Sarmiento's favor his issuance of a hold-departure order against the accused. - Rene U. Borromeo