Duterte appoints Diosdado Peralta as Chief Justice

President Rodrigo Duterte has appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta as chief justice, Malacañang said Wednesday.

Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea confirmed to GMA News Online that Peralta got the appointment. SC spokesman Brian Keith Hosaka also announced the development.

Duterte's third chief justice appointee, Peralta succeeded Lucas Bersamin, who retired on October 18.

"We are certain that with Chief Justice Peralta at the helm of the Supreme Court, the judiciary will continue to be well-managed as it thrives to uphold the principles of judicial excellence, integrity and independence," presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said.

Peralta, the most senior magistrate of the three candidates, beat out Associate Justices Estela Perlas-Bernabe and Andres Reyes, Jr. for the post. Associate Justice Jose Reyes Jr., the fourth applicant, did not make the shortlist provided to the President by the screening body Judicial and Bar Council.

The Laoag native and University of Santo Tomas law alumnus started out as a public prosecutor in 1987 then went on to become a trial court judge in 1994, an associate justice and later the presiding justice of the Sandiganbayan, before he was appointed to the SC in 2009.

He had also served as a professor of law in the UST Faculty of Civil Law, the Ateneo de Manila University, San Beda College of Law, the University of the East, and the University of the Philippines Law Center.

He is married to Court of Appeals Justice Fernanda Lampas-Peralta, with whom he has four children.

During his interview by the JBC for the post, he tearfully said: "I think I deserve to be Chief Justice."

Peralta will retire from the judiciary when he turns 70 in March 2022.

Decisions

An appointee of former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Peralta voted in favor of Duterte's declaration of martial law in Mindanao and its subsequent extensions, the ouster of Duterte critic and former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno, and Arroyo's acquittal in a plunder case.

He wrote the decision upholding the legality of the burial of former president Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, concurred in the declaration of the Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel as unconstitutional, and voted to uphold the arrest of Senator Leila de Lima.

Peralta also penned the SC decision in People vs. Romy Lim, in which a then-drug convict was acquitted because of law enforcement's failure to justify their failure to comply with the chain of custody rule under the dangerous drugs law.

This decision set guidelines for law enforcement who are unable to meet the requirements. It has supposedly led to acquittals, but Peralta said the rules provide that courts may dismiss such cases "without prejudice" to refiling.

At the Sandiganbayan, Peralta was part of the division that convicted former president Joseph Estrada of plunder.

His profile at the SC website says he wrote the first conviction for plunder in 2001, when he sentenced a Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) cashier for diverting to and withdrawing from her bank account P260 million in withholding taxes paid to the BIR.

"He likewise convicted the most number of accused involved in big time drugs cases and other serious crimes, and meted the maximum penalty provided by law," his profile states.

The Peralta court, which is now mostly composed of Duterte appointees, will be deciding cases involving the president's war on drugs, his unilateral move of withdrawing the country from the International Criminal Court, and former senator Bongbong Marcos' election protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.  —NB/RSJ, GMA News