double jeopardy : sameness of act

In Yap, petitioner Manuel Yap was charged in Criminal Case No. 16054 of the Municipal Court of Iloilo City, with violation of Article 14 of Ordinance No. 22, Series of 1951, in relation to Ordinance No. 15, Series of 1954, of the City of Iloilo. The information charged him with having "wilfully, unlawfully and feloniously drive[n] and operate[d]" an automobile — "recklessly and without reasonable caution thereby endangering other vehicles and pedestrians passing in said street." Three months later, Yap was again charged in Criminal Case No. 16443 of the same Municipal Court, this time with serious physical injuries through reckless imprudence. The information charged him with violation of the Revised Motor Vehicle Law (Act No. 3992 as amended by Republic Act No. 587) committed by driving and operating an automobile in a reckless and negligent manner and as a result thereof inflicting injuries upon an unfortunate pedestrian. Yap moved to quash the second information upon the ground that it placed him twice in jeopardy of punishment for the same act. This motion was denied by the respondent municipal judge. Meantime, another municipal judge had acquitted Yap in Criminal Case No. 16054. Yap then instituted a petition for certiorari in the Court of First Instance of Iloilo to set aside the order of the respondent municipal judge. The Court of First Instance of Iloilo having reversed the respondent municipal judge and having directed him to desist from continuing with Criminal Case No. 16443, the respondent Judge brought the case to the Supreme Court for review on appeal. In affirming the decision appealed from and holding that the constitutional protection against double jeopardy was available to petitioner Yap, then Associate Justice and later Chief Justice Roberto Concepcion wrote:

To begin with, the crime of damage to property through reckless driving — with which Diaz stood charged in the court of first instance — is a violation of the Revised Penal Code (third paragraph of Article 365), not the Automobile Law (Act No. 3992, as amended by Republic Act No. 587). Hence, Diaz was not twice accused of a violation of the same law. Secondly, reckless driving and certain crimes committed through reckless driving are punishable under different provisions of said Automobile Law. Hence — from the view point of Criminal Law, as distinguished from political or Constitutional Law — they constitute, strictly, different offenses, although under certain conditions, one offense may include the other, and, accordingly, once placed in jeopardy for one, the plea of double jeopardy may be in order as regards the other, as in the Diaz case. (Emphases in the original)

Thirdly, our Bill of Rights deals with two (2) kinds of double jeopardy. The first sentence of clause 20, section 1, Article III of the Constitution, ordains that "no person shall be twice put in jeopardy of punishment for the same offense." (Emphasis in the original) The second sentence of said clause provides that "if an act is punishable by a law and an ordinance, conviction or acquittal under either shall constitute a bar to another prosecution for the same act." Thus, the first sentence prohibits double jeopardy of punishment for the same offense, whereas the second contemplates double jeopardy of punishment for the same act. Under the first sentence, one may be twice put in jeopardy of punishment of the same act provided that he is charged with different offenses, or the offense charged in one case is not included in or does not include, the crime charged in the other case. The second sentence applies, even if the offenses charged are not the same, owing to the fact that one constitutes a violation of an ordinance and the other a violation of a statute. If the two charges are based on one and the same act conviction or acquittal under either the law or the ordinance shall bar a prosecution under the other. 12 Incidentally, such conviction or acquittal is not indispensable to sustain the plea of double jeopardy of punishment for the same offense. So long as jeopardy has attached under one of the informations charging said offense, the defense may be availed of in the other case involving the same offense, even if there has been neither conviction nor acquittal in either case.

The issue in the case at bar hinges, therefore, on whether or not, under the information in case No. 16443, petitioner could — if he failed to plead double jeopardy — be convicted of the same act charged in case No. 16054, in which he has already been acquitted. The information in case No. 16054 alleges, substantially, that on the date and in the place therein stated, petitioner herein had wilfully, unlawfully and feloniously driven and operated "recklessly and without reasonable caution" an automobile described in said information. Upon the other hand, the information in case No. 16443, similarly states that, on the same date and in the same place, petitioner drove and operated the aforementioned automobile in a "reckless and negligent manner at an excessive rate of speed and in violation of the Revised Motor Vehicle Law (Act No. 3992), as amended by Republic Act No. 587, and existing city ordinances." Thus, if the theories mentioned in the second information were not established by the evidence, petitioner could be convicted in case No. 16443 of the very same violation of municipal ordinance charged in case No. 16054, unless he pleaded double jeopardy.

It is clear, therefore, that the lower court has not erred eventually sustaining the theory of petitioner herein.

Put a little differently, where the offenses charged are penalized either by different sections of the same statute or by different statutes, the important inquiry relates to the identity of offenses charge: the constitutional protection against double jeopardy is available only where an Identity is shown to exist between the earlier and the subsequent offenses charged. In contrast, where one offense is charged under a municipal ordinance while the other is penalized by a statute, the critical inquiry is to the identity of the acts which the accused is said to have committed and which are alleged to have given rise to the two offenses: the constitutional protection against double jeopardy is available so long as the acts which constitute or have given rise to the first offense under a municipal ordinance are the same acts which constitute or have given rise to the offense charged under a statute.

The question may be raised why one rule should exist where two offenses under two different sections of the same statute or under different statutes are charged, and another rule for the situation where one offense is charged under a municipal ordinance and another offense under a national statute. If the second sentence of the double jeopardy provision had not been written into the Constitution, conviction or acquittal under a municipal ordinance would never constitute a bar to another prosecution for the same act under a national statute. An offense penalized by municipal ordinance is, by definition, different from an offense under a statute. The two offenses would never constitute the same offense having been promulgated by different rule-making authorities — though one be subordinate to the other — and the plea of double jeopardy would never lie. The discussions during the 1934-1935 Constitutional Convention show that the second sentence was inserted precisely for the purpose of extending the constitutional protection against double jeopardy to a situation which would not otherwise be covered by the first sentence. 13

The question of Identity or lack of Identity of offenses is addressed by examining the essential elements of each of the two offenses charged, as such elements are set out in the respective legislative definitions of the offenses involved. The question of Identity of the acts which are claimed to have generated liability both under a municipal ordinance and a national statute must be addressed, in the first instance, by examining the location of such acts in time and space. When the acts of the accused as set out in the two informations are so related to each other in time and space as to be reasonably regarded as having taken place on the same occasion and where those acts have been moved by one and the same, or a continuing, intent or voluntary design or negligence, such acts may be appropriately characterized as an integral whole capable of giving rise to penal liability simultaneously under different legal enactments (a municipal ordinance and a national statute).

In Yap, the Court regarded the offense of reckless driving under the Iloilo City Ordinance and serious physical injuries through reckless imprudence under the Revised Motor Vehicle Law as derived from the same act or sets of acts — that is, the operation of an automobile in a reckless manner. The additional technical element of serious physical injuries related to the physical consequences of the operation of the automobile by the accused, i.e., the impact of the automobile upon the body of the offended party. Clearly, such consequence occurred in the same occasion that the accused operated the automobile (recklessly). The moral element of negligence permeated the acts of the accused throughout that occasion.

In the instant case, the relevant acts took place within the same time frame: from November 1974 to February 1975. During this period, the accused Manuel Opulencia installed or permitted the installation of electrical wiring and devices in his ice plant without obtaining the necessary permit or authorization from the municipal authorities. The accused conceded that he effected or permitted such unauthorized installation for the very purpose of reducing electric power bill. This corrupt intent was thus present from the very moment that such unauthorized installation began. The immediate physical effect of the unauthorized installation was the inward flow of electric current into Opulencia's ice plant without the corresponding recording thereof in his electric meter. In other words, the "taking" of electric current was integral with the unauthorized installation of electric wiring and devices.

It is perhaps important to note that the rule limiting the constitutional protection against double jeopardy to a subsequent prosecution for the same offense is not to be understood with absolute literalness. The Identity of offenses that must be shown need not be absolute Identity: the first and second offenses may be regarded as the "same offense" where the second offense necessarily includes the first offense or is necessarily included in such first offense or where the second offense is an attempt to commit the first or a frustration thereof. 14 Thus, for the constitutional plea of double jeopardy to be available, not all the technical elements constituting the first offense need be present in the technical definition of the second offense. The law here seeks to prevent harrassment of an accused person by multiple prosecutions for offenses which though different from one another are nonetheless each constituted by a common set or overlapping sets of technical elements. As Associate Justice and later Chief Justice Ricardo Paras cautioned in People vs. del Carmen et al., 88 Phil. 51 (1951):

While the rule against double jeopardy prohibits prosecution for the same offense, it seems elementary that an accused should be shielded against being prosecuted for several offenses made out from a single act. Otherwise, an unlawful act or omission may give use to several prosecutions depending upon the ability of the prosecuting officer to imagine or concoct as many offenses as can be justified by said act or omission, by simply adding or subtracting essential elements. Under the theory of appellant, the crime of rape may be converted into a crime of coercion, by merely alleging that by force and intimidation the accused prevented the offended girl from remaining a virgin. (88 Phil. at 53; emphases supplied)

By the same token, acts of a person which physically occur on the same occasion and are infused by a common intent or design or negligence and therefore form a moral unity, should not be segmented and sliced, as it were, to produce as many different acts as there are offenses under municipal ordinances or statutes that an enterprising prosecutor can find

FIRST DIVISION

G.R. No. L-45129 March 6, 1987

PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, petitioner,
vs.
THE HONORABLE BENJAMIN RELOVA, in his capacity as Presiding Judge of the Court of First Instance of Batangas, Second Branch, and MANUEL OPULENCIA, respondents.