MANILA, Philippines – President Rodrigo Duterte has appointed Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Alexander Gesmundo as Supreme Court justice, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea said Monday.
Gesmundo, the fourth appointee of the chief executive, replaced Jose Mendoza, who retired at the age of 70 last August 13.
The new justice of the high tribunal, who used to be the the anti-graft court’s Seventh Division chairman, was admitted to the bar on April 27, 1985 and started government service with the Office of the Solicitor General as trial attorney in August of the same year.
Gesmundo became assistant solicitor general in 2002 and was on seconded appointment as commissioner of the Presidential Commission on Good Government from July 1998 to February 2001.
In 2004, Gesmundo became a member of the Court of Tax Appeals’s Committee on Revision of the Rules.
In 2008, Gesmundo penned the ruling that found then General Nakar, Quezon Mayor Leovegildo R. Ruzol guilty of authorizing the release of hot logs and lumber from 2001 to 2004.
Gesmundo said in his ruling that Ruzol had committed 221 counts of usurpation of authority or official functions equivalent to more than 111 years imprisonment.
But by virtue of the “three-fold rule” under Article 70 of the Revised Penal Code that provides that a convict may not be penalized for longer than three-fold the most severe penalty for his offense, the mayor was sentenced to only one year, six months, and three days.
Gesmundo also penned the 2009 decision that acquitted retired Major General Carlos Garcia of perjury charges in connection with his alleged falsification of his 1997 Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN).
In the ruling, Gesmundo said the prosecution failed to prove that Garcia had deliberate intention not to declare in his SALN three vehicles collectively worth around P1.6 million.
He was also among the member of the Sandiganbayan’s Special Second Division that dismissed in 2016 the plunder case against former Department of Agriculture (DA) Undersecretary Jocelyn “Jojoc” Bolante in connection with the P723-million fertilizer fund scam during the Arroyo administration.
Bolante was accused of pocketing P265.6 million of P723 million in public funds released in February 2004 under the DA”s Farm Input Farm Implement Program.
In 2008, during a Senate inquiry, Bolante admitted distributing the fund to 159 local government officials before the 2004 national polls but denied any irregularity in the release of the money and cleared then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of any role in the said disbursements.
