THE camp of Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo yesterday insisted before the House committee on justice that the impeachment complaint against the latter was a baseless and false charge and meant only to blackmail the justices into reversing its ruling on Filipino comfort women.

At the same time, the panel chaired by Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas submitted the matter for voting Tuesday next week to determine whether probable cause to impeach Del Castillo exists.

During yesterday’s hearing, Atty. Louie Ogsimer, lawyer for Del Castillo, said the complaint on alleged plagiarism which stands on single ground of betrayal of public trust was baseless because there was no law against plagiarism.

“There is no law that has been passed by Congress which criminalizes plagiarism. The closest law is the infringement of copyright which is Republic Act No. 8293 passed by Congress in 1998,” said Ogsimer, the representative of Del Castillo who is going to undergo heart bypass on February 27.

“It says that copyright by any author when infringe is a criminal but Congress also came out with exceptions in that same law provided exceptions and its reads that any use made by the purpose of judicial proceedings or giving professional advice or by legal practitioner is not or is exempt from charge of infringement. Therefore a judicial writing by a very law of Congress itself cannot cause infringement, this cannot constitute plagiarism,” Ogsimer added.

Ogsimer also stressed that what was being complained in the decision “was not the main source but the secondary source.”

He said that the complaint against Del Castillo was intended to pressure the SC to reverse its unanimous decision on comfort women.

“The charge here is plagiarism, there is no crime, this is no bribery, this is not culpable violation of the Constitution and not a high crime. This is actually a claim to reverse a decision of a party lost.

“If we allow this to happen, every party litigant in the SC who losses will come to this honorable office and files an impeachment cases against each and every justice no matter how hardworking the justice of the SC is,” said Ogsimer.

Isabelita Vinuya of Malaya Lolas Organization, one of the complainants, admitted that they were made to believe by their lawyers that the impeachment process will help reverse the SC ruling.