Estrada v Sandiganbayan

G.R. No. 148560. November 19, 2001

TOPIC: Void for Vagueness/Over breadth

FACTS:
On 4 April 2001, an Information for plunder was filed against former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada.
Petitioner Joseph Ejercito Estrada, the highest-ranking official to be prosecuted under RA 7080 (An Act
Defining and Penalizing the Crime of Plunder), as amended by RA 7659, assailed the said law for being
unconstitutional.
He contends that (a) it suffers from the vice of vagueness; (b) it dispenses with the reasonable doubt
standard in criminal prosecutions; and, (c) it abolishes the element of mens rea in crimes already punishable
under The Revised Penal Code, all of which are violations of fundamental right of due process.

ISSUE: Whether or not the crime of plunder is unconstitutional for being vague?

HELD:

Court holds that RA 7080 otherwise known as the Plunder Law, as amended by RA 7659, is
CONSTITUTIONAL. Consequently, the petition to declare the law unconstitutional is DISMISSED for lack of
merit.
The test in determining whether a criminal statute is void for uncertainty is whether the language conveys a
sufficiently definite warning as to the prescribed conduct when measured by common understanding and
practice.
The vagueness doctrine merely requires a reasonable degree of certainty for the statute to be upheld
not absolute precision or mathematical exactitude.
A statute is not rendered uncertain and void merely because general terms are used therein, or because of
the employment of terms without defining them. There is no positive constitutional or statutory command
requiring the legislature to define each and every word in an enactment. Congress inability to so define the
words employed in a statute will not necessary result in the vagueness or ambiguity of the law so long as the
legislative will is clear, or at least, can be gathered from the whole act, which is distinctly expressed in the
Plunder Law.
It is a well-settled principle of legal hermeneutics that words of a statute will be interpreted in their natural,
plain, and ordinary acceptation and signification, unless it is evident that the legislature intended a technical
or special legal meaning to those words.
Every provision of the law should be construed in relation and with reference to every other part.
There was nothing vague or ambiguous in the provisions of R.A. 7080