Sandigan justice named to Supreme Court

MANILA, Philippines - Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Alexander Gesmundo is the 178th justice of the Supreme Court.

Gesmundo, the fourth appointee of President Duterte to the Supreme Court, takes the place of SC Justice Jose Mendoza, who retired from the judiciary last Sunday.

The President earlier appointed Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Samuel Martires, Court of Appeals Associate Justice Noel Tijam and CA Presiding Justice Andres Reyes Jr. to the SC following the retirements of Justices Jose Perez, Arturo Brion and Bienvenido Reyes, respectively.

Just like Reyes, Gesmundo was a graduate of Ateneo law school and a brother of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez in the Utopia fraternity.

Martires and Tijam, on the other hand, were graduates of San Beda College of Law like Duterte.

During his interview with the Judicial and Bar Council, Gesmundo was asked about their low disposition of cases in the Sandiganbayan.

“Cases in Sandiganbayan are peculiar,” he explained, also citing as reasons the defendants’ use of “multiple lawyers with different strategies” and the “difficulty bringing witnesses to the court.”

Gesmundo was chair of the Sandiganbayan 7th Division.

He penned the ruling that cleared former military comptroller and retired major general Carlos Garcia of perjury in connection with his 1997 SALN, where he supposedly failed to declare ownership of three vehicles, and the ruling convicting two retired and seven active police officers for graft in connection with the P38-million ghost purchases in 1992.

He was also among the signatories of the Fifth Division resolution in January 2016 denying the bail petitions of former senator Jinggoy Estrada and Janet Lim-Napoles, alleged mastermind of the multibillion-peso pork barrel fund scam.

Gesmundo is a lecturer at the Philippine Judicial Academy and was a Bar examiner in Remedial Law in 2009. Prior to his stint at the judiciary, he worked at the Office of the Solicitor General. – With Elizabeth Marcelo