8. Estrada v. Sandiganbayan G.R. No.

14560, 36 SCRA 394 (November 19, 2001)

Facts:

1. Joseph Ejercito Estrada (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..

2. Estrada wishes to impress the Court that the assailed law is so defectively fashioned that it crosses
that thin but distinct line which divides the valid from the constitutionality infirm. That there was a clear
violations of the fundamental rights of the accused to due process and to be informed of the nature and
cause of the accusation.

Issue/s:

1. Whether or not the Plunder Law is unconstitutional for being vague.

2. Whether or not Plunder Law requires less evidence for providing the predicate crimes of plunder
and therefore violates the rights of the accused to due process.

3. Whether Plunder as defined in RA 7080 is a malum prohibitum.

Ruling:

1. No. 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

2. No. The legislature did not in any manner refashion the standard quantum of proof in the crime of
plunder. The burden still remains with the prosecution to prove beyond any iota of doubt every fact or
element necessary to constitute a crime.
 What the prosecution needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt is only a number of acts sufficient to form a
combination or series which would constitute a pattern and involving an amount of at least P50,000,000.00.
There is no need to prove each and every other act alleged in the information to have been committed by
the accused in furtherance of the overall unlawful scheme or conspiracy to amass, accumulate or acquire
ill-gotten wealth.

3. No. It is malum in se. The legislative declaration in RA No. 7659 that plunder is a heinous offense
implies that it is a malum in se. For when the acts punished are inherently immoral or inherently wrong,
they are mala in se and it does not matter that such acts are punished in a special law, especially since in
the case of plunder that predicate crimes are mainly mala in se.

Its abomination lies in the significance and implications of the subject criminal acts in the scheme of the
larger socio-political and economic context in which the state finds itself to be struggling to develop and
provide for its poor and underprivileged masses. Reeling from decades of corrupt tyrannical rule that
bankrupted the government and impoverished the population, the Philippine Government must muster the
political will to dismantle the culture of corruption, dishonesty, green and syndicated criminality that so
deeply entrenched itself in the structures of society and the psyche of the populace. [With the government]
terribly lacking the money to provide even the most basic services to its people, any form of
misappropriation or misapplication of government funds translates to an actual threat to the very existence
of government, and in turn, the very survival of people it governs over.

Note:

 A statute establishing a criminal offense must define the offense with sufficient definiteness that
persons of ordinary intelligence can understand what conduct is prohibited by the statute. It can only be
invoked against the specie of legislation that is utterly vague on its face, i.e., that which cannot be clarified
either by a saving clause or by construction.

 The “Reasonable Doubt” standard has acquired such exalted statute in the realm of constitutional
law as it gives life to the Due Process Clause which protects the accused against conviction except upon
proof beyond reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.

 A statute or act may be said to be vague when it lack comprehensible standards that men of
common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ in its application. In such instance,
the statute is repugnant to the Constitution in two (2) respects it violates due process for failure to accord
persons, especially the parties targeted by it, fair notice of what conduct to avoid; and it leaves law
enforcers unbridled discretion in carrying out its provisions and becomes an arbitrary flexing of the
Government muscle. The first may be “saved” by proper construction, while no challenge may be mounted
as against the second whenever directed against such activities.

The test in determining whether a criminal statute is void for uncertainty is whether the language conveys a
sufficiently definite warning as to the proscribed conduct when measured by common understanding and
practice. It must be stressed, however, that the “vagueness” doctrine merely requires a reasonable degree
of certainty for the statute to be upheld – not absolute precision or mathematical exactitude.
A facial challenge is allowed to be made to a vague statute and to one which is overbroad because of
possible “chilling effect” upon protected speech. The theory is that “[w]hen statutes regulate or proscribe
speech and no readily apparent construction suggests itself as a vehicle for rehabilitating the statutes in a
single prosecution, the transcendent value of all society of constitutionally protected expression is deemed
to justify along attacks on overly broad statutes with no requirement that the persons making the attack
demonstrate that his own conduct could not be regulated by a statute draw with narrow specificity. The
possible harm to society in permitting some unprotected speech to go unpunished is outweighed by the
possibility that the protected speech of others may be deterred and perceived grievances left to fester
because of possible inhibitory effects of overly broad statutes.

This do not apply to penal statutes. Criminal statutes have general in terorrem effect resulting from their
very existence, and, if facial challenge is allowed for this reason alone, the State may well be prevented
from enacting laws against socially harmful conduct. In the area of criminal law, the law cannot take
chances as in the area of free speech.

24. Tumey vs. Ohio [273 US 510, 7 March 1927]

Taft (CJ):
Facts: Tumey was arrested at White Oak, and was brought before Mayor Pugh, of the village of North
College Hill, charged with unlawfully possessing intoxicating liquor. He moved for his dismissal because of
the disqualification of the mayor to try him under the 14th Amendment. The mayor denied the motion,
proceeded to the trial, convicted Tumey of unlawfully possessing intoxicating liquor within Hamilton county
as charged, fined him $100, and ordered that he be imprisoned until the fine and costs were paid. Tumey
obtained a bill of exceptions and carried the case on error to the court of common pleas of Hamilton county.
That court heard the case and reversed the judgment, on the ground that the mayor was disqualified as
claimed. The state sought review by the Court of Appeals of the First Appellate District of Ohio, which
reversed the common pleas and affirmed the judgment of the mayor. On 4 May 1926, the state Supreme
Court refused Tumey’s application to require the Court of Appeals to certify its record in the case. Tumey
then filed a petition in error in that court as of right, asking that the judgment of the mayor’s court and of the
appellate court be reversed on constitutional grounds. On 11 May 1926, the Supreme Court adjudged that
the petition be dismissed for the reason that no debatable constitutional question was involved in the
cause. The judgment was then brought to the US Supreme Court upon a writ of error allowed by the Chief
Justice of the state Supreme Court, to which it was rightly directed.
Issue: Whether the pecuniary interest of the Mayor and his village, and the system of courts in prosecuting
violations of the Prohibition Act, renders the mayor disqualified from hearing the case.
Held: All questions of judicial qualification may not involve constitutional validity. Thus matters of kinship,
personal bias, state policy, remoteness of interest would seem generally to be matters merely of legislative
discretion. But it certainly violates the 14th Amendment and deprives a defendant in a criminal case of due
process of law to subject his liberty or property to the judgment of a court, the judge of which has a direct,
personal, substantial pecuniary interest in reaching a conclusion against him in his case. Herein, the mayor
has authority, which he exercised in the case, to order that the person sentenced to pay a fine shall remain
in prison until the fine and costs are paid. The mayor thus has a direct personal pecuniary interest in
convicting the defendant who came before him for trial, in the $12 of costs imposed in his behalf, which he
would not have received if the defendant had been acquitted. This was not exceptional, but was the result
of the normal operation of the law and the ordinance. The system by which an inferior judge is paid for his
service only when he convicts the defendant has not become so embedded by custom in the general
practice, either at common law or in this country, that it can be regarded as due process of law, unless the
costs usually imposed are so small that they may be properly ignored as within the maxim “de minimis non
curat lex.” The Court cannot regard the prospect of receipt or loss of such an emolument in each case as a
minute, remote, trifling, or insignificant interest. It is certainly not fair to each defendant brought before the
mayor for the careful and judicial consideration of his guilt or innocence that the prospect of such a
prospective loss by the mayor should weigh against his acquittal. But the pecuniary interest of the mayor in
the result of his judgment is not the only reason for holding that due process of law is denied to the
defendant here. The statutes were drawn to stimulate small municipalities, in the country part of counties in
which there are large cities, to organize and maintain courts to try persons accused of violations of the
Prohibition Act everywhere in the county. The inducement is offered of dividing between the state and the
village the large fines provided by the law for its violations. The trial is to be had before a mayor without a
jury, without opportunity for retrial, and with a review confined to questions of law presented by a bill of
exceptions, with no opportunity by the reviewing court to set aside the judgment on the weighing of
evidence, unless it should appear to be so manifestly against the evidence as to indicate mistake, bias, or
willful disregard of duty by the trial court. Thus, no matter what the evidence was against him, the
defendant had the right to have an impartial judge. He seasonably raised the objection, and was entitled to
halt the trial because of the disqualification of the judge, which existed both because of his direct pecuniary
interest in the outcome, and because of his official motive to convict and to graduate the fine to help the
financial needs of the village. There were thus presented at the outset both features of the disqualification.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Ohio is reversed, and the cause remanded for further proceedings
not inconsistent with the present opinion.

Tumey v. Ohio

Tumey v. Ohio was a case considered by the United States Supreme Court in 1927 . The court struck down
an Ohio law that denied citizens their constitutionally guaranteed right to due process by financially
rewarding public officials for successfully prosecuting cases related to Phohibition.
Following the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1919, the Ohio
government implemented stringent measures to enforce Prohibition within the state's borders. One law, the
Crabbe Act, compensated mayors, justices of the peace, various judges, and other law enforcement
officials with additional money beyond their normal pay whenever they arrested, convicted, and fined
violators of the Eighteenth Amendment. Many legal officials sought to extend their jurisdiction into nearby
cities to arrest and prosecute more violators and to enhance the judges' own paychecks.
This particular law became the foundation for Tumey v. Ohio, a case before the United States Supreme
Court, in 1927. In North College Hill, Ohio, a man was arrested for illegally possessing alcohol, a violation
of the Eighteenth Amendment. This man contended that the law compensating officials with additional
money for liquor cases violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution by depriving
him of "due process of law." Attorneys for the accused man claimed that judges were more likely to convict
accused people because convictions increased the judges' and other law enforcement officials' salaries. In
March 1927, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff over the defendant, the State of Ohio.
Upon losing the case before the Supreme Court, the Ohio legislature attempted to enact another law that
would compensate judges for hearing additional cases beyond a normal number. It would not matter how
the judges ruled in the cases; the state and local governments would guarantee the judges' additional pay.
This legislation was never implemented. Ohio voters defeated the measure in a referendum in the autumn
of 1927 by a two-to-one advantage.
Tumey v. Ohio and the events that resulted from it illustrate the divisions among Ohioans over Prohibition.

40. REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES. VS. ALBIOS

REPUBLIC OF THE PHILS. VS. ALBIOS G.R. No. 198780 October 16, 2013

FACTS:

Fringer and Liberty Albios got married on October 22, 2004, before the sala of Judge Calo in Mandaluyong
City. 2 years after their marriage (December 6, 2006), Albios filed with the RTC a petition for declaration of
nullity of her marriage with Fringer. According to her, the marriage was a marriage in jest because she only
wed the American to acquire US citizenship and even arranged to pay him $2,000 in exchange for his
consent. Adding that immediately after their marriage, they separated and never lived as husband and wife
because they never really had any intention of entering into a married state and complying with their marital
obligations. The court even sent summons to the husband but he failed to file an answer.

Both the RTC and CA ruled in favor of Albios declaring that the marriage was void ab initio for lack of
consent because the parties failed to freely give their consent to the marriage as they had no intention to be
legally bound by it and used it only as a means to acquire American citizenship in consideration of
$2,000.00.. However, the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) elevated the case to the SC. According to
the OSG, the case do not fall within the concept of a marriage in jest as the parties intentionally consented
to enter into a real and valid marriage. That the parties here intentionally consented to enter into a real and
valid marriage, for if it were otherwise, the purpose of Albios to acquire American citizenship would be
rendered futile.

ISSUE:

Is a marriage, contracted for the sole purpose of acquiring American citizenship in consideration of
$2,000.00, void ab initio on the ground of lack of consent?

RULING:

NO. Both Fringer and Albios consented to the marriage. In fact, there was real consent because it was not
vitiated nor rendered defective by any vice of consent.

Their consent was also conscious and intelligent as they understood the nature and the beneficial and
inconvenient consequences of their marriage, as nothing impaired their ability to do so.

That their consent was freely given is best evidenced by their conscious purpose of acquiring American
citizenship through marriage. Such plainly demonstrates that they willingly and deliberately contracted the
marriage. There was a clear intention to enter into a real and valid marriage so as to fully comply with the
requirements of an application for citizenship. There was a full and complete understanding of the legal tie
that would be created between them, since it was that precise legal tie which was necessary to accomplish
their goal.

Under Article 2 of the Family Code, for consent to be valid, it must be (1) freely given and (2) made in the
presence of a solemnizing officer.

A "freely given" consent requires that the contracting parties willingly and deliberately enter into the
marriage.

Consent must be real in the sense that it is not vitiated nor rendered defective by any of the vices of
consent under Articles 45 and 46 of the Family Code, such as fraud, force, intimidation, and undue
influence. None of these are present in the case.

Therefore, their marriage remains valid.