People of the Philippines v. Carlos (CRIM1)

Note: didn't include all arguments of Carlos. Only included the one abt equal protection.


People of the Philippines v. Carlos
People of the Philippines, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Apolonio Carlos, Defendant Appellant

En Banc

Doctrine: Due process & equal protection

Keywords: Equal Protection

Date: June 30, 1947

Ponente: Justice Tuason

Facts: 

• The appellant was found guilty of treason by the People's Court and sentenced to reclusion perpetua, to pay a fine of P7,000, and costs.
• background lang on why: The lower court found that one day in July or August, 1944, about two or three o'clock in the morning, a truck pulled up to the curb in front of a house on Constancia Street, Sampaloc, Manila, where one Martin Mateo lived. From the truck the accused, a Japanese spy, alighted together with members of the Japanese military police and pointed Martin Mateo's house and Fermin Javier's house to his Japanese companions, whereupon the Japanese soldiers broke into Martin Mateo's dwelling first and Fermin Javier's afterwards. In those houses they seized Martin Mateo, Ladislao Mateo and Fermin Javier, bound their hands, and put them in the truck. Along with other persons who had been rounded up in the other places and who had been kept in the truck while it was parked, they were taken to Fort Santiago where the two Mateos and Fermin Javier were tortured and from which they were released six days later. The reason for the arrest and maltreatment of Martin and Ladislao Mateo was that they had refused to divulge the whereabouts of their brother, Marcelino Mateo, who was a guerrilla and who had escaped from the Japanese. And Fermin Javier was arrested and tortured because he himself was a guerrilla, a fact which Carlos knew or at least suspected.
• Carlos alleged that the law creating the People's Court is unconstitutional; that numerous provisions of the People's Court Act are singled out as contrary to the Organic Law

Issue: WON the People's Court Act (PCA) is unconstitutional.

Held: No. The judgment of the lower court is affirmed with costs against appellant.

Ratio:

• Carlos argued that The PCA contained
• provisions which deal on matters entirely foreign to the subject matter expressed in its 
• title, such as: 
• (1) a provision which retains the jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance;
• (2) a provision which adds to the disqualification of Justices of the Supreme Court 
• and provides a procedure for their substitution; 
• (3) a provision which changed the 
• existing Rules of Court on the subject of bail, and 
• (4) a provision which suspends 
• Article 125 of the Revised Penal Code.
• Government of the Philippine Islands vs. Municipality of Binalonan: The People's Court was intended to be a full and complete scheme with its own machinery for the indictment, trial and judgment of treason case. The various provisos mentioned, in our opinion, are allied and germane to the subject matter and purposes of the People's Court Act; they are subordinate to its end. The multitude of matters which the legislation, by its nature, has to embrace would make mention of all of them in the title of the act cumbersome. It is not necessary, and the Congress is not expected, to make the title of an enactment a complete index of its contents.
• SC: The constitutional rule is satisfied if all parts of a law relate to the subject expressed in its title.
• Carlos also argued that PCA deprives persons similarly situated of the equal protection of the laws inasmuch as:
• (1) Only those political offenders against whom cases are filed within six months from the passage of the law are to be tried in the People's Court, while others are to be tried in the Courts of First Instance;
• SC: The People's Court is a court of special and restricted jurisdiction created under the stress of an emergency and national security. It was devised to operate for a limited period only, a limitation imposed by economic necessity and other factors of public policy. Obviously, the main concerning the creation of a special court was the trial and and disposition of the cases, numbering over 6,000, of accused who were being held by the United States military authorities and who were to be turned over to the Commonwealth Government.
• (2) Political offenders accused in the People's Court are denied preliminary examination and/or investigation whereas the others who shall be entitled thereto;
• SC:  Section 22 in denying preliminary investigation to persons accused before the People's Court is justified by the conditions prevailing when the law was enacted. In view of the great number of prisoners then under detention and the length of time and amount of labor that would be consumed if so many prisoners were allowed the right to have preliminary investigation, considered with the necessity of disposing of these cases at the earliest possible dates in the interest of the public and of the accused themselves, it was not an unwise measure which dispensed with such investigation in such cases. Preliminary investigation, it must be remembered, is not a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution.
• (3) Political offenders accused in the People's Court have limited right to appeal, while those who may be accused of the same crimes in the Courts of First Instance have absolute right of appeal inasmuch as under section 13 of the law, Rules 42 and 46 of the Rules of Court are made applicable to the latter;
• SC: The People's Court is a collegiate court whereas the Court of First Instance is presided over by a single judge. Appeal is not a constitutional but statutory right. The admitted fact that there is no discrimination among appeals from the same court or class of court saves the provision objected to from being unconstitutional
• (4) Appeals in the case involving persons who held any office or position under either or both the Philippine Executive Commission and the Philippine Republic or any branch, instrumentality and/or agency thereof are to heard and decided by a substantially different Supreme Court, thus causing lack of informity in rulings over the same subject;
• SC: This objection does not seem to fall within the subject of constitutional guarantee against deprivation of equal protection of the laws. Be that as it may, we find no merit in the appellant's contention. 
• SC: The disqualification under the People's Court Act of some or a majority of the members of this Court and their substitution by justices of the Court of Appeals or judges of the Courts of First Instance do not make the Supreme Court, as thus constituted, a new court in the eyes of the law. 
• SC: A court is an entity possessing a personality separate and distinct from the men who compose or sit on it. This objection is no more valid than that of a party in an ordinary action who protests that his case is heard by a Supreme Court which, by reason of disability of a majority of its regular members, is made up mostly of judges from outside. 
• SC: As to the "lack of uniformity in rulings over the same subject," it need only be said that the Constitution does not insure uniformity of judicial decisions; neither does it assure immunity from judicial error.
• (5) The first proviso of section 19 thereof prescribes a different rule as to the granting of release on bail only with respect to the political offenders detained by the United States Army and released to the Commonwealth of the Philippines but not as to others political offenders accused or accusable of the same crimes; and
• (6) The second proviso of section 19 thereof suspends article 125 of the Revised Penal Code only as to those political detainees released by the United States Army to the Commonwealth of the Philippines or, at most, only to those accused or accusable of the crimes specified in the law and not as to all persons accused or accusable of crimes against national security committed during the second world war, much less to all offenders, notwithstanding the fact that there is no reasonable and real difference among said groups of offenders.
• SC: (5) and (6) The two provisos in section 19 do no constitute denial of equal protection of the laws. The distinction made by these provisos between two sets of accused in the "granting or release on bail" and in the application of article 125 of the Revised Penal Code are not arbitrary or fanciful calculated to favor or prejudice one or the other class.
• Laurel vs. Misa (76 Phil., 372): this Court explained the reasons which necessitated the extension to six months of the authorized detention of persons charged with treason before filing of information. The provisos rest "on some real and substantial difference or distinction bearing a just and fair relation to the legislation."
• Carlos argued that (c) It is a bill of attainder in that it virtually imposes upon specific, known and identified individuals or group of individual, the penalty of detention and imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months without any form of judicial trial or procedure
• Cummings vs. Missouri: The bill of attainder is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without judicial trial."
• SC: Detention of a prisoner for a period not exceeding six months pending investigation or trial is not a punishment but a necessary extension of the well-recognized power to hold the criminal suspected for investigation