[ People. November 10, 1948 ] 82 Phil. 111
[ People. November 10, 1948 ]
RE-CASES APPEALED FROM THE PEOPLE’S COURT. R E S O L U T I O N
PARAS, J.: There are about forty treason cases appealed to this Court before the re-creation of the Court of Appeals wherein the penalty imposed is less than or death. After the re-creation of the Court of Appeals, these cases were certified to it. The question that arises is whether they should be left with that court or whether they correspond and should be returned to this Court.
Under Commonwealth Act No. 682, the People’s Court had jurisdiction not only to try and decide all cases of crimes against national security but to convict and sentence the accused for any crime included in the acts alleged in the information and established by the evidence, and decisions and final orders of said court were subject to review by the Supreme Court.
When Commonwealth Act No. 682 was enacted on September 25, 1945, there was no Court of Appeals, this court having been abolished by Executive Order No. 37 dated March 10, 1945; and this is evidently the only reason why the decisions of the People’s Court were appealable to the Supreme Court irrespective of the penalty imposed.
The Court of Appeals was re-created by Republic Act No. 52, approved on October 4, 1946, with the result, needless to say, that it has thereafter resumed its exclusive appellate jurisdiction of all cases, actions and proceedings not falling within the exclusives appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Act No. 52, section 3, further provides that “all cases which properly correspond to the Court of Appeals by virtue of the provisions of Commonwealth Act Numbered Three, as revived and amended, which may be pending in the Supreme Court and which have not yet been heard on argument and submitted for decision by this Court, shall be certified by the Clerk of the Supreme Court to the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, to be heard and decided by the latter in conformity with the provisions of this Act.”
The Judiciary Act of 1948 (No. 296), passed on June 17, 1948, has preserved the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court over “all criminal cases involving offenses for which the penalty imposed is death or life imprisonment; and those involving other offenses which, although not so punished, arose out of the same occurrence or which may have been committed by the accused on the same occasion, as that giving rise to the more serious offense, regardless of whether the accused are charged as principals, accomplices, or accessories, or whether they have been tried jointly or separately” (Section 17, par. A7), as well as the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals over “all cases, actions, and proceedings not enumerated in section seventeen of this Act. (Section 29). Moreover, the said Judiciary Act has repealed all laws and rules inconsistent therewith (Section 99).
With the complete restoration of the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals and the repeal of all laws and rules inconsistent with the Judiciary Act of 1948, it must logically follow that the treason cases hereinabove mentioned fall under the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals, because they do not belong to criminal cases specified in section 17 of said Act. It is not even necessary to invoke, in support of the propriety of the certification by this Court of those cases to the Court of Appeals, section 3 of Act No. 52, because, in view of the repealing clause of the Judiciary Act of 1948, all cases falling under the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals, whether or not heard on argument and submitted for decision by the Supreme Court, have to be certified to the Court of Appeals. This step is expressly authorized by section 31 of the Judiciary Act (formerly section 145-H of the Revised Administrative Code, as revived by Republic Act No. 52) which provides that “all cases which may be erroneously brought to the Supreme Court or to the Court of Appeals shall be sent to the proper court, which shall hear the same, as if it had originally been brought before it.” This provision is comprehensive enough to include cases “erroneously brought” not only after but also before the approval of the Judiciary Act.
It is true that section 29 of the Judiciary Act, in referring to the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals, speaks of “all cases, actions, and proceedings not enumerated in section seventeen of this Act, properly brought to it from Court of First Instance.” But, in our opinion, the specific mention of “Courts of First Instance” cannot alter or qualify the limits of the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court as expressly fixed by section 17 of the Judiciary Act and determined, as regards criminal cases, by the penalty imposed (death or life imprisonment), and as a corrollary the exclusive appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals over criminal cases in which the penalty imposed is less than death or life imprisonment.
Moreover, the People’s Court should be considered as having at most the category of a court of first instance in the sense contemplated in section 29 of the Judiciary Act. Whereas the people’s Court had special and limited jurisdiction, the court of first instance has general jurisdiction, so that, if one is higher than the other, it must be the court of first instance. Our classification finds official support in Republic Act No. 311 which has transferred all cases pending in the People’s Court upon the latter1s abolition to the respective courts of first instance of the province or cities where the offenses are alleged to have been committed, and which makes the decisions of the courts of first instance in such cases appealable to the Court of Appeals or to the Supreme Court as the case may be, in accordance with the provisions of the existing laws and rules. Even the People’s Court Act (No. 682) considered that court as having merely the category of a court of first instance when, in section 2, it provided that treason cases not instituted within the period therein fixed “shall be filed with, tried and determined by the proper Court of First Instance.”
If the treason cases in question should be returned to and decided by this Court, we shall furthermore have the anomaly that similar cases decided by the courts of first instance after the abolition of the People’s Court will be appealable to and disposed of by the Court of Appeals in virtue of Republic Act No. 311. The decision by the Supreme Court of some such cases was warranted before the revival of the Court of Appeals, but for the Supreme Court to take cognizance of said treason cases now, when the Court of Appeals is functioning, would amount to a discrimination.
We therefore hold that the treason cases here-inabove referred to were properly certified to, and should be duly disposed of, by the Court of Appeals.
Ozaeta, Bengzon, Briones, Tuason, and Montemayor, JJ., concur.