Estrada v.

Sandiganbayan acceptation and signification, unless it is evident

that the legislature intended a technical or
Facts: special legal meaning to those words.

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:
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

1. Whether or not the Plunder Law is
reasonable doubt is only a number of acts
unconstitutional for being vague.
sufficient to form a combination or series which
2. Whether or not Plunder Law requires less
would constitute a pattern and involving an
evidence for providing the predicate crimes of
amount of at least P50,000,000.00. There is no
plunder and therefore violates the rights of the
need to prove each and every other act alleged
accused to due process.
in the information to have been committed by
3. Whether Plunder as defined in RA 7080 is a
the accused in furtherance of the overall
malum prohibitum.
unlawful scheme or conspiracy to amass,
accumulate or acquire ill-gotten wealth.
Ruling:

3. No. It is malum in se. The legislative declaration

1. No. A statute is not rendered uncertain and void
in RA No. 7659 that plunder is a heinous offense
merely because general terms are used therein,
implies that it is a malum in se. For when the
or because of the employment of terms without
acts punished are inherently immoral or
defining them. There is no positive
inherently wrong, they are mala in se and it
constitutional or statutory command requiring
does not matter that such acts are punished in a
the legislature to define each and every word in
special law, especially since in the case of
an enactment. Congress’ inability to so define
plunder that predicate crimes are mainly mala
the words employed in a statute will not
in se.
necessary result in the vagueness or ambiguity
of the law so long as the legislative will is clear,
Its abomination lies in the significance and
or at least, can be gathered from the whole act,
implications of the subject criminal acts in the
which is distinctly expressed in the Plunder Law.
scheme of the larger socio-political and
economic context in which the state finds itself
It is a well-settled principle of legal
to be struggling to develop and provide for its
hermeneutics that words of a statute will be
poor and underprivileged masses. Reeling from
interpreted in their natural, plain, and ordinary
 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.