EN BANC
G.R. No. L-30026 January 30, 1971
MARIO GUMABON, BLAS BAGOLBAGOL, GAUDENCIO AGAPITO, EPIFANIO PADUA and PATERNO PALMARES, petitioners,
vs.
THE DIRECTOR OF THE BUREAU OF PRISONS, respondent.
Jose W. Diokno for petitioners.
Office of the Solicitor General Felix V. Makasiar, Assistant Solicitor General Antonio A. Torres and Solicitor Eduardo C. Abaya for respondent.
Separate Opinions
TEEHANKEE, J., concurring and dissenting:
The petitioners at bar, three of whom pleaded guilty1 and two of whom stood trial,2 were meted out life terms in 1953, 1954 and 1955 for the so-called complex crime of rebellion with multiple murder and other crimes, and have served or are now entering into their 17th year of imprisonment, save for petitioner Epifanio Padua who was sentenced on December 15, 1955 and is completing his 15th year of imprisonment, (excluding the periods they were under pre-conviction detention). The leaders of the rebellion who were meted out death and life sentences for the same charge by the Court of First Instance of Manila had their sentences reduced last near to ten years of prision mayor by the Court in People v. Lava,3 wherein the Court expressly re-affirmed the doctrine first laid down in 1956 in People vs. Hernandez,4 that the crime of rebellion cannot be complexed with other common crimes since such common crimes "assume the political complexion of the main crime of which they are mere ingredients and consequently cannot be punished separately from the principal offense, or complexed with the same, to justify the imposition of a graver penalty." The Court rejected therein the State's plea for the reexamination and setting aside of such doctrine, declaring that "(T)his Court has given this plea of the Solicitor General a very serious consideration, but after a mature deliberation the members of this Court have decided to maintain that ruling in the Hernandez case and to adhere to what this Court said in that case." The said leaders have since been duly freed as having served out their penalty, but their followers, herein petitioners, are still serving their life sentences.
I concede the validity of the ruling in Pomeroy vs. Director of Prisons5 that "(W)ith reference to persons in custody pursuant to a final judgment, the rule is that the writ of habeas corpus can issue only for want of jurisdiction of the sentencing court, and cannot function as a writ of error." "I grant, too, that at the time of the Pomeroy decision in 1960, as noted therein, "the existence of the 'complexed' rebellion (was) still upheld by a sizable number of lawyers, prosecutors, judges and even justices of this Court." But with the doctrine first enunciated in 1956 in Hernandez by a bare six-to-four majority vote having withstood the test of time6 and having been just last year unreservedly reaffirmed without a single dissent in Lava, it cannot now be gainsaid that it is now part of our legal system that the crime of "complexed" rebellion does not exist in our Revised Penal Code. No prosecutor would now file an information for "complexed" rebellion but simply for the offense of simple rebellion as defined in Article 134 of the Revised Penal Code, and even if such an information for "complexed" rebellion to be so filed, the trial courts would be bound to quash such information as not charging an offense on the strength of Lava and Hernandez.
Petitioners have therefore properly invoked in their favor the provisions of Article 22 of the Revised Penal Code that:
ART. 22. Retroactive effect of penal laws.—Penal laws shall have a retroactive effect insofar as they favor the person guilty of a felony, who is not a habitual criminal, as this term is defined in rule 5 of article 62 of this Code, although at the time of the publication of such laws a final sentence has been pronounced and the convict is serving the same.
in relation to the provisions of Article 8 of the Civil Code that "(J)udicial decisions applying or interpreting the laws or the Constitution shall form a part of the legal system of the Philippines."
The situation of petitioners is no different than it would be if, say, the penalty of reclusion perpetua were imposed by statute for the crime of simple rebellion at the time of their conviction and they were accordingly sentenced, and the statutory penalty were now reduced to prision mayor or 12 years imprisonment; having served out the maximum penalty of 12 years now imposed by the amended statute, they would be entitled to invoke the retroactive effect of the statute favoring them.lâwphî1.ńčt The only difference between the situation given and the present case is that here it is this Supreme Court, interpreting the laws in discharge of its constitutional prerogative, that has laid down the doctrine since Hernandez in 1956 that no offense of "complexed" rebellion exists and petitioners should therefore be now equally entitled to the retroactive favorable effect of such doctrine.
The actual case of petitioners is that at the time of their conviction, it was believed — erroneously — that the crime committed by them was punishable by life imprisonment, but the Court has subsequently judicially determined it not be so and that the maximum imposable penalty is prision mayor or 12 years. Petitioners-convicts are entitled to the benefit of this later judicial declaration, just as if a statutory amendment had been enacted—not because the sentencing court had no jurisdiction or is now ousted of jurisdiction. The writ prayed for should issue, since as held in Directo vs. Director of Prisons,7 "the only means of giving retroactive effect to a penal provision favorable to the accused where the trial judge has lost jurisdiction over the case, is the writ of habeas corpus."
The question of jurisdiction of the sentencing court therefore is moot, for it is universally recognized that relief by habeas corpus may be properly sought in cases of imposition of excessive penalty, such that the part of the sentence beyond or in excess of the power of the court to impose is held void, the applicant having already served out the entire part of the sentence within the court's power. 8 As pointed out by the Court in Rodriguez vs. Director of Prisons,9 furthermore, "Article 22 of the Revised Penal Code ... extends its benefits even to convicts serving sentence, and the only legal remedy open to them to make use of such benefits is the writ of habeas corpus inasmuch as, if the penalty imposed upon them under the former penal law was decreased by the revised code, the excess has become illegal."
Regardless, therefore, of whether the trial courts that sentenced petitioners to life sentences had jurisdiction or not to impose such penalty, or were right or wrong in imposing such penalty, the only relevant question now is whether petitioners have served the maximum — and lesser — sentence of prision mayor that this Court has by firm judicial doctrine since 1956 determined to be the penalty that the Revised Penal Code fixes for the crime of rebellion. Since they have actually served much more than the maximum imposable penalty, the excess of the sentence imposed upon them over the imposable maximum of twelve years of prision mayor cannot but be declared illegal and they should now be set free.
In People vs. Parel, 10 the Court held that the provisions of a new law (Act 3030) for the prescription of certain election offenses (fixing the same at one year after commission) were more favorable to the accused than those of the pre-existing law and were therefore retroactive as to the same offenses committed before the enactment of the new law. In meeting the objection that the reduced prescription period was by its terms applicable only to offenses resulting from the new law (which amended the pre-existing Election Law) and could not be given retroactive effect, the Court found "that practically all of the offenses defined in the former law are also defined in the same language in Act 3030 (the new law), the only difference being that the penalties have been increased." Holding that the retroactivity clause of Article 22 of the Penal Code must apply in all in which the new law is more favorable to the accused, in the absence of any express statutory exception, the Court drew this analogy: "Let us suppose that a statute is enacted defining the crime of murder in the same language in which it is defined in the Penal Code, but providing that the maximum penalty for the crime defined in the new statute shall be life imprisonment, the statute containing no provision that it shall not be retroactive in its effect. Would anyone then maintain that the death penalty might still be imposed for murder committed before the new statute was enacted?"
The case at bar for petitioners is much stronger. Here, there is no question even as to the enactment of a law statute describing the crime in the same language and imposing a lesser penalty, but the settled doctrine of this Court that there does not exist in our legal system the complex crime of rebellion of which the petitioners stand convicted, "since rebellion cannot form a complex with common crimes, because the latter are either absorbed by the rebellion itself or are punishable as independent offenses." 11 Petitioners here have been convicted for the very same rebellion and under the very same law for which their leaders, Jose Lava et al., have been convicted. Yet, while their leaders have since been freed after serving their sentences of ten years of prision mayor, petitioners as mere followers are serving out the life sentences imposed on them, notwithstanding their already having served out much more than the maximum penalty of twelve years of prision mayor imposable upon them. The fact that the legal doubts about the non-existence of the crime of "complexed" rebellion were cleared up only in 1956 after they had already been convicted and were serving their sentences does not make the excess in the penalty imposed upon them beyond the maximum of twelve years any less illegal.
The rule of prospective and non-retroactive operation of judicial doctrines, and its corollary rule of the law of the case, have no application here.ℒαwρhi৷ These salutary rules decree that rights of parties having been decisively settled and determined by final judgment of the court of competent jurisdiction with the party adversely affected having had the opportunity to raise in the case all relevant questions, the decision becomes the law of the case, and vested rights would be impaired, judicial chaos and disorder ensue and litigation would be never-ending and would become more intolerable than the wrongs it is intended to redress, should an adjudicated case be reopened simply because in another and subsequent case, this Court adopted a new or different construction of the law under which a different result of the adjudicated case might have been obtained. Here, the whole question turns — simply — on the nature of the crime of rebellion as defined in section 134 of the Revised Penal Code and the maximum penalty imposable therefor under section 135 of the same Code. As this Court had ruled since 1956--which is now settled doctrine—that only the crime of simple rebellion exists in our legal system for which the maximum penalty of prision mayor may be imposed, the excess of the life sentences imposed upon petitioners over the imposable maximum of prision mayor cannot stand and must necessarily be declared void.
Prescinding then from the question of jurisdiction of the sentencing courts, the case at bar presents a clear case of an excess in penalty imposed beyond twelve years of prision mayor which has become illegal by virtue of this Court's settled doctrine that the crime of rebellion cannot be complexed with other common crimes. On this ground, as well as on the further and more fundamental ground that to hold them liable to continue serving life sentences for a crime that the law—at the time of their conviction as well as now—punishes only with prision mayor which they have more than fully served, would be to deny them their constitutional rights of due process and equal protection of the law.
Any further detention of petitioners, in my view as above discussed, is illegal and unconstitutional and the petition for habeas corpus should be granted and petitioners forthwith set at liberty.
Reyes, J.B.L., Makalintal and Villamor, JJ., concur.
Footnotes
1 Petitioners Gumabon, Agapito and Palmares.
2 Petitioners Bagolbagol and Padua.
3 28 SCRA 72, 100 (May 16, 1969).
4 99 Phil. 515 (1956).
5 107 Phil., 50 (1960).
6 Reiterated in People vs. — Geronimo, 100 Phil., 90 (1956); — Togonon, 101 Phil., 804 (1957); — Romagoza, 103 Phil., 20 (1958); and Aquino, 108 Phil., 814 (1960).
7 56 Phil. 692 (1932).
8 Cruz vs. Director of Prisons, 17 Phil. 269 (1910); See also Caluag vs. Pecson, 82 Phil. 8 (1948).
9 57 Phil. 133 (1932).
10 44 Phil. 437 (1932), emphasis copied; see also People vs. Moran, 44 Phil. 387 (1923).
11 Pomeroy vs. Director of Prisons, supra fn. 5, see pp. 54, 61.
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