Tagum judge faces fencing charges

DAVAO CITY — A Tagum City judge, along with two others, is facing fencing charges for allegedly using a stolen vehicle which was the subject of a criminal case he had handled.

Chief state prosecutor Jovencito Zuño upheld an earlier resolution of state prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco indicting Regional Trial Court Judge Erasto Salcedo, his driver Reynaldo David and one Leopoldo Gonzaga, the present owner of the Mitsubishi Pajero.

Velasco also recommended that Salcedo be administratively charged for violation of the Canons of Judicial Ethics and Code of Judicial Conduct.

Salcedo was caught by agents of the Regional Traffic Management Office at a checkpoint in Barangay Tibungco on June 1 last year, on board a Mitsubishi Pajero which had no current-year sticker.

The traffic enforcers confronted Salcedo’s driver, but the judge explained that they were on their way to Cagayan de Oro City and that he only borrowed the vehicle from Gonzaga.

Salcedo, however, made the mistake of showing a copy of his decision acquitting Gonzaga of fencing charges filed against him by the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force.

It turned out though that the Pajero, owned by one Reynaldo Uy of Ayala Alabang, was stolen while parked at the Ortigas Center in Pasig City on Aug. 16, 1998.

Gonzaga had reasoned out that he was unaware that the Pajero which Gonzaga lent him was the subject of the court case because its color had been changed.— Edith Regalado