Short answer. Yes, if the delay is malicious. The Revised Penal Code punishes a judge guilty of malicious delay in the administration of justice with a correctional penalty. The word that carries the weight is malicious: ordinary congestion, a heavy docket or simple inefficiency is not this crime.
What the law says
The penalty of prision correccional in its minimum period shall be imposed upon any judge guilty of malicious delay in the administration of justice.
Revised Penal Code, Article 207 — Malicious Delay Of Justice. Read the full provision →
What has to be proved
Three things. The accused must be a judge — the article does not reach clerks, sheriffs, prosecutors or lawyers, whose misconduct is punished under other provisions. There must be a delay in the administration of justice, in a proceeding pending before that judge. And the delay must be malicious: deliberate, with a wrongful or improper motive such as favouring one side, punishing a litigant, or extracting something. Malice is the whole case. A judge who is buried in cases, ill, or simply slow is not committing this offence, however frustrating the wait. Proving what was in a judge's mind is difficult, which is why prosecutions on this article are rare.
The penalty, and what it carries with it
The penalty fixed is prisión correccional in its minimum period, a correctional penalty in the range of six months and one day to two years and four months, subject to the ordinary rules on modifying circumstances. Conviction of a crime of this kind also has consequences well beyond the sentence itself: it carries the accessory penalties the Code attaches to correctional penalties, and a judge convicted of an offence connected to the office faces separate proceedings that can end in removal from the judiciary and forfeiture of retirement benefits. The criminal case does not replace those; it runs alongside them, and the outcome of one does not bind the other.
The administrative route is usually the real remedy
For a litigant whose case has stalled, a criminal complaint is rarely the practical answer. Judges are subject to constitutional and internal periods for deciding submitted matters, and to a disciplinary system that handles undue delay as an administrative offence with its own penalties — reprimand, fine, suspension or dismissal — without requiring proof of criminal malice. That system is designed for exactly this complaint and moves on a far lower evidentiary threshold. There are also ordinary procedural tools: a motion for early resolution, a motion to set the case, and, where a judge unlawfully refuses to act on a matter he is duty-bound to decide, a special civil action to compel action.
If you think your case is being sat on
Build a dated record before doing anything else. Note when each pleading was filed, when each matter was submitted for resolution, when hearings were set, reset and by whose motion, and what orders issued. Certified copies from the records section are worth more than recollection. File a written motion for early resolution and keep the received copy — an unanswered written request is itself evidence. Understand the risk, too: an accusation of malice against a judge who has merely been slow can expose the complainant to liability, and a groundless criminal complaint will not speed the case up. Before filing against a judge, book a consultation and have the record reviewed.