SC suspends Pasig judge

The Supreme Court ordered yesterday the suspension of a Pasig City judge who had Bureau of Immigration chief Rufus Rodriguez arrested last year because of the BI’s refusal to release an illegal alien.

In a decision written by Associate Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, the high court suspended for three months without pay Judge Rodolfo Bonifacio of the Pasig Regional Trial Court for displaying a "deplorable deficiency in his knowledge for basic principles governing contempt."

Associate Justice Bernardo Pardo, who wrote a concurring decision, said that Bonifacio deserved a stiffer penalty for abusing his authority, and should be outrightly dismissed from the service.

The ruling stemmed from a complaint filed by Rodriguez seeking Bonifacio’s dismissal as a judge for violating the "code of judicial conduct, grave ignorance of the law, gross incompetence, gross inefficiency, and knowingly rendering an unjust judgment."

Rodriguez filed the case after Bonifacio had him and two other immigration officials arrested and detained at the Pasig City jail on June 25 last year.

Bonifacio ruled that the immigration officials were guilty of indirect contempt for refusing to comply with his order releasing Chinese national Ma Jing, one of the suspected foreign prostitutes arrested by the BI and the National Bureau of Investigation for working without permit at a karaoke bar in Malate on May 7, 1999. Rodriguez was released hours after his arrest on orders of the Court of Appeals. – Rey Arquiza