THE Supreme Court has suspended a Makati Regional Trial Court judge for six months for receiving P100,000 in exchange for a favorable decision—even though she returned the money and the complaint against her was dropped.

In suspending Judge Evelyn Arcaya-Chua of Branch 144, the justices said the decision by Sylvia Santos, Chua’s aunt, to withdraw her complaint did not prevent the Court from conducting its own investigation and disciplining erring judges.

“The office of a judge is sacred and imbued with public interest. The need to maintain the public’s confidence in the judiciary cannot be made to depend solely on the whims and caprices of complainants who are, in a real sense, only witnesses therein,” said Justice Ma. Alicia Austria-Martinez of the Third Division, who wrote the decision.

The court said “most telling of all the circumstances pointing to respondent’s guilt was the “unwavering stance” of Emerita Muñoz, from whom Chua solicited and received P100,000 in exchangea for a favorable ruling in her cases.

The Court said Santos’ testimony revealed her true reasons for withdrawing her complaint: that Chua, after all, returned the money. The Court observed that Chua, who was at the same meeting, never objected to that statement, a failure that the Court found “truly damaging.”

In May 2007, the Supreme Court suspended Chua over allegations of irregularities in her issuance of protection orders and ordered her office padlocked to ensure that court records would not be tampered with.

Chua’s latest suspension stemmed from a complaint for serious misconduct and dishonesty filed by Santos, the aunt of Chua’s husband, alleging that in September 2002, she asked the help of Chua, then presiding judge of the Metropolitan Trial Court Branch 62 of Makati City, over the cases of her friend Muñoz that were pending before the Supreme Court.

A former Supreme Court employee, Chua was alleged to have asked P100,000 from Muñoz, and which Chua would give to a court employee for the speedy resolution of the cases.

Santos said she gave Chua the amount in October 2002 and followed up the case in February 2003. At this time, Chua told her there was a problem as the other party was offering P10 million to the justices. The complainant then asked Chua to return the P100,000, but Chua could no longer be contacted.

Chua denied the charges against her.

The Court asked Court of Appeals Justice Marina Buzon to investigate the case in July 2007.

During the preliminary conference on Sept. 4, 2007, Santos said she wanted to drop her complaint against Chua “for the sake of unity and harmonious relations in their family,” among other things.

Buzon, in October 2007, recommended the dismissal of the administrative case against Chua “in view of the paucity of evidence upon which a conclusion could be drawn, brought about by the withdrawal by Santos of her complaint and her failure and refusal to prove the allegations in her complaint.”

The Court, adopting Buzon’s recommendation, dismissed the complaint for lack of evidence and ordered Santos to show cause why she should not be held in contempt for filing an unfounded complaint against Chua.

In her statement dated Jan. 6, 2008, Santos said that, contrary to the Court’s impression, her complaint against Chua was not unfounded. “All the the allegations therein are true and based on respondent’s personal knowledge,” she said.

Dissatisfied by the answer, the Court reopened the case against Chua and ordered Court of Appeals Justice Rebecca Salvador to conduct a new investigation.

The Court later agreed with Salvador’s findings that there were “sufficient grounds” to hold Chua liable for the offenses charged.

Recommending that Chua be administratively penalized for grave misconduct and dishonesty, Salvador found, among other things, that the complainant’s allegations were true and based on personal knowledge, and it was only because of the respondent and their family’s pleas that she gave up her complaint against Chua.

Salvador said Chua had no reason to ask forgiveness from Santos if, indeed, she had falsely instituted the administrative case against her.

Salvador also said that Santos’ testimony that Chua had returned the money meant that she took it in the first place.

“If it is true that she received no money. it necessarily and logically follows that respondent would not have returned—as in fact she would not have anything to return—said money to complainant,” Salvador said.

Aside from the six-month suspension, the Court warned Chua that a similar act would merit a more severe penalty.