The Supreme Court unanimously voted to fire the second vice-president of the Labor Court in San Francisco de Macoris, Washington David Espino Munoz. The SC found the judge to be guilty of serious faults in the exercise of his duties. A disciplinary hearing was begun in April 2003, following a complaint lodged by Juan Jeremias Paulino, the first vice-president of the Labor Court. Besides refusing to sign court decisions, Espino Munoz had waged a campaign to denigrate his fellow judges; held consultations and guidance sessions in his office with lawyers arguing cases in his court; and displayed a public lack of respect, aggression, and offensiveness towards his judicial superiors and subalterns. The deposed magistrate said he would request a hearing before the International Court of Human Rights. El Caribe revealed, however, that the judge has been suspended without pay for over one year and two months. Among his many questionable actions was telling his students at the local university that his colleague Judge Juan Paulino “was a disgrace, a laughing stock of the court,” and that the palm prints on the judge’s desk look “more like a monkey’s than a human being’s.”