[ G.R. No. L-4027. October 02, 1950 ] 87 Phil. 418
[ G.R. No. L-4027. October 02, 1950 ]
JEAN L. ARNAULT, PETITIONER, VS. POTENCIANO PECSON, JUDGE OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE OF MANILA, RESPONDENT. D E C I S I O N
TUASON, J.:
This is a petition for certiorari, prohibition and mandamus, assailing alleged refusal by the Court of First Instance of Manila to grant the petitioner ample opportunity to prepare his defense in criminal case No. 12821 of that court, in which he is charged with Income tax evasion. In his prayer the petitioner asks that Judge Pecson, the respondent judge, be commanded to allow him to go out of Bilibid Prison under guard to look for and confer with his witnesses, but from the allegations in the body of the application and annexes thereto, it appears that the motions submitted to and denied by the court were that the accused be allowed to take papers from his office in the Trade and Commerce Building on Calle J. Luna, Manila. We will regard the last as the relief which the petitioner seeks in these proceedings.
The pleadings show that the petitioner is under prosecution by an information filed by the City Fiscal on May 31, 1950, for a violation of the National Internal Revenue Code, in that, it is alleged) in certain translations he received for one Ernest H. Burt a total net profit of P1,480,000, the income tax on which, amounting to P1,089,270, the accused had the duty under law to pay but did willfully and unlawfully fail, neglect and refuse, despite repeated demands, to do.
The accused, who is in confinement in Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa for contempt of the Senate, filed on July 6, 1950, through his attorney, a motion with the lower court to order the Director of Prisons to permit him under guard to get papers pertinent to his case from his office in the Trade and Commerce Building on J. Luna Street, Manila.
On the same date, Judge Pecson denied that motion on the ground that, since the accused was imprisoned by order of the Senate, “it would be improper to grant said motion because it would be an encroachment on the prerogatives of the Senate.”
Undaunted, the accused, under date of July 27, reiterated his motion, citing the fact that one Aurelio Alvero and one Andres Camasura as defendants in other criminal cases had been allowed to leave Bilibid Prison under guard to prepare their defenses. He added that all the papers he needed for his defense were in his office and in his house and that no one else but he had access to them.
On July 28, Judge Pecson, “considering the motion well founded,” “authorized (the Director of Prisons) to allow the accused to go to his office and residence under guards on July 29, 1950 from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the most for the purpose of getting all the necessary papers which he needs for his defense.”
On July 29, the accused protested that two hours and a half was not enough to enable him to take advantage of the court’s liberality and stated that he had to have at least half a day.
On July 31, the court set the last motion for August 2, at 8:30 a.m., with the warning that after hearing thereof the trial of the case on the merits would proceed immediately.
It is alleged in the application for certiorari and mandamus that on August 2 the court, after taking up the motion of July 29, manifested willingness to grant the same but changed its mind when the City Fiscal objected unless certain conditions were imposed. These conditions, according to the petition, were: (1) that the petitioner first reveal the nature and contents of the documents which he wanted to get as well as the exact parts of his office and his house in which the documents were being kept and the persons who, besides the petitioner, had access to said documents; (2) that the defendant tell the court whether he could not entrust the key or keys to the containers of the documents to a person of his confidence; (3) that the guards to accompany the accused be Instructed not to allow him to destroy any of his documents because the City Fiscal intended to get a search warrant for their seizure; (4) that the accused make a list and give the description of the documents which he should have removed from his office or house.
Petitioner’s counsel objected to these conditions telling the court that they were equivalent to a revelation of the evidence for the defense and to forcing the defendant to testify against himself.
One of the most vital and precious rights accorded accused by the Constitution is due process, which includes a fair and impartial trial and reasonable opportunity for the preparation of defense. While the Constitution and the law of the land do not specify what this opportunity is to consist of, beyond stating that accused shall have not less than two days to prepare for trial (section 7, Rule 114), it is by necessary implication within the court’s sound discretion in exceptional cases to allow him, besides time, adequate freedom of action, if the courts are to give form and substance to this guaranty. Other judges conscious of this principle have allowed prisoners with proper safeguards to leave the prison walls with the object of securing evidence, without in so doing exceeding the bounds of their authority, of propriety, or legal procedure. She respondent Judge himself in his order of July 28 considered the petitioner’s motion meritorious and would allow him two hours and a half. Leave to go under guard outside the prison or the courtroom would not, as feared, set a dangerous precedent, for the matter is always subject to the control and discretion of the court to be judged according to its merits.
In the nature of things, no hard and fast rule can be laid down as to what is reasonable time or reasonable opportunity. Each case must be determined by its peculiar circumstances. What are the facts in this connection? And are they such that a denial of defendant’s request would constitute an abuse of discretion justifying intervention by the Supreme Court?
On this feature of the case it appears that the accused was already in jail for contempt of the Senate when the present? criminal action was started. Having been committed to prison for another cause which has only an indirect bearing go- the instant prosecution, and not foreseeing in all probability the turn which his imprisonment for contempt would take, it is justifiable to assume that the defendant did not bother, and had no time, to arrange his evidence and put himself in readiness for this prosecution which, as just stated, was posterior to his commitment to prison. From the character of the indictment and of the transactions involved, there is also reasonable ground to believe that much if not chief of defendant’s evidence is documentary, not merely testimonial which could be assembled with a mere postponement of the trial; and remembering the volume and diversity of his business dealings, there is added ground to suppose that the defendant possesses numerous and mixed records and documents pertaining to diverse matters and kept in separate files. Lastly, the accused stated in his motion that he alone has access to these papers, documents and records, as assertion; which has not been contradicted and sounds plausible enough.
In the light of these circumstances, which are only the salient ones, it would seem that the defendant has made a sufficient showing to merit a favorable action on his request as a measure of necessity for an adequate preparation for trial. More than that, since His Honor had already deigned to grant the accused two and a half hours in one of his orders, this made it so much easier, without endangering the interest of the public, to give him another two hours and a half for which he vigorously pleaded. The refusal to give this additional time, which would not make much, if any, difference to the prosecution, smacks of a market place haggling if not mockery, in that, as the defendant’s counsel pointed out, two hours and a half was barely enough to cover the route of travel to and from the accused’s home and his office, what with the heavy traffics in Pasay where his home is located and in the Manila commercial districts.
The point made that as the petitioner is imprisoned by virtue of an order of the Philippine Senate his request for “temporary release” from confinement should be addressed to that body, shows at once its inconsistency with the court’s order of July 29. As previously seen, by that order the court would grant the petitioner two hours and a half. The fact that this concession was made “only in the interest of justice,” as the court puts it, or “only as a privilege to the accused,” as the Fiscal says, would not erase the inconsistency. Nor would the strings which the prosecution would attach to the permission make it any the less disrespectful to the legislative department or violative of the checks and balance system. If on the other land by invoking the interest of justice the court would prevent the permission from being a subversion of the Senate’s order, then the granting of, say, six hours instead of two and a half in the interest of justice and as a privilege to the accused would clothe the permission with the color of legality.
In reality, however, permission to the defendant to go to his office or home for the purpose indicated would not infringe on the Senate’s order of commitment. Such permission is not a release from prison, as the lower court mistakenly assumes; not any more than to bring the defendant to court for trial from Bilibid Prison would be. In their legal and factual connotations, bringing the defendant to court for trial and allowing him to go to his office to get evidence are the same, the same if account is taken of the fact that the latter is part and parcel of the same trial and essential to the defense which has been forced upon the accused by the filing of the accusation. Only hairsplitting technicalities can find any dissimilarity between the two things. It can not be argued without resorting to unreasoning legal niceties that to take a prisoner to Manila, to Zamboanga for that matter, to face trial is not an encroachment on the Senate’s prerogatives but that to allow him under guard a few hours to procure evidence from his home or office is an interference with those prerogatives.
Having shown that the two hypotheses are the same, the logical result of the court’s theory would be that a prisoner of the Senate charged with a criminal offense could not be tried without the Senate’s authorization, unless the trial were held in Bilibid Prison, which is outside the court’s jurisdiction. Carried to its ultimate conclusion, the theory would mean that a citizen committed to Jail by the Senate or the House of Representatives could not be prosecuted in any court of justice unless the corresponding legislative body was willing. (Authority to give permission carries with it authority to refuse. It should further follow that prosecution for a criminal offense of a prisoner of one of the Houses of Congress would have to wait until the expiration of his sentence if the Senate or House should object. Even if we take for granted that the Senate or the House would always yield to the request, the incongruities would not entirely be eliminated. It should be remembered that unless convoked to a special session, the Congress meets only 100 continuous days a year, so that for eight months during congressional recess there would be no Senate or House to go to for permission. It is a fact, which may have been Ignored or overlooked, that such permission if within the congressional power to give or withhold could be granted only by either House acting as a body, arid that the Senate President, the Speaker or any legislative committee would have no power to act in the premises for their respective chambers.
One other incongruity that can readily be seen would be that, while the Senators or Members of the House of Representatives themselves are not privileged from arrest and prosecution except in limited cases and during their attendance at the sessions of the Congress and in going to and returning from the same (Section 15, Article VI of the Constitution), the Congress or. either of its component parts could paralyze the machinery of justice and timely stop for a longer period the prosecution of others for graver offenses.
These anomalous consequences will not be possible if we do not lose sight of the truth that the separation of powers is not rigid and absolute but abstract and general, intended for practical purposes and adapted to common sense. There is no such thing as complete and definite designation by the Constitution of all the particular powers that appertain to each of the several departments. The constitutional structure is a complicated system, and overlappings of governmental functions are recognized, unavoidable, and inherent necessities of governmental co-ordination. The power itself to punish for contempt which the Senate exercised in sending Arnault to by nature belongs to the judiciary but has been upheld as a power incidental to or inherent in a deliberative body necessary to its existence and due functioning» The rule is thus expressed in Corpus Juris Secundum:
“Although the absolute separation of the powers.of government is the theory of American constitutional government, it has never been entirely true in practice, and is no longer an accepted canon among political scientists. The courts recognize that the separation of the powers is far from complete, and that the line of demarkation between them is often indefinite, and it has been held not the purpose of the constitution to make a total separation of these three powers, but that the division of powers is abstract and general, and intended for practical purposes, and a constitutional provision prohibiting the exercise by one department of another’s powers does not include all governmental functions or powers. Hence, in practice the departments are not required to be kept entirely distinct without any connection with, or dependence on, each other, and each of the three departments normally exercises powers which are not strictly within its province, and while it is not possible wholly to avoid conflict between them, one department should not so act as to embarrass another in the discharge of respective functions, and the constitution-should be expounded to blend the departments no more than it affirmatively requires.” (16 C. J. S., 293, 294.)
So any action not amounting to a release of a prisoner committed by the Senate to prison, taken by the executive and the judiciary departments with respect to such prisoner in the legitimate discharge of their respective functions, is not impairment of the doctrine of the distribution of governmental powers« The fact that a person is a prisoner of the.Senate or of the House does not, under the principle cited, exclude other departments during his incarceration from trying or investigating him in matters pertaining to their spheres, in much the same way that a prisoner by judgment of a court of justice is not placed beyond the reach of the legislature and the executive to summon for examination and to allow in relation to the investigation to go anywhere under guard to get such evidence as the investigator or the prisoner might deem important.
In the face of the facts here shown to prevail, we are of the opinion that the respondent Judge committed an abuse of discretion and prejudicial error in not granting the defendant’s motions. By this refusal the defendant would be denied his fundamental right to a fair and impartial hearing which the Constitution assures him. Where a request by a defendant charged with crime for a chance to make his defense is reasonable and made in good faith and not for delay, it is good policy to veer towards the liberal side avoiding refinements of argument that may serve only to hide the substance of the issue. It is even of greater importance to the cause of justice for courts to deviate from the sterotyped technical rules of practice and lose a few hours than to run the risk of depriving accused of the requisite opportunity to present his side of the controversy.
Upon the foregoing consideration, the respondent Judge is ordered to grant the petitioner for the purpose hereinbefore stated not less than six hours to visit his home in Pasay City and/or his office on J. Luna Street, Manila, with guards to see, but not more than to see, that the prisoner does not escape or commit any act forbidden by law and the prison rules.
The petitioner’s prayer to annul the proceedings heretofore had in the court below is denied, any irregularity committed in those proceedings prejudicial to the rights of the defendant being proper subject for review on appeal in case of conviction.
There will be no special finding as to costs.
Moran, C.J., Ozaeta, Paras, Pablo, and Reyes, JJ., concur.