FACTS:
Charged with the murder of Rafael de las Alas,
petitioner Jose Antonio Leviste was convicted by the Regional Trial
Court of Makati City for the lesser crime of homicide and sentenced to suffer
an indeterminate penalty of six years and one day of prision mayor as
minimum to 12 years and one day of reclusion temporal as maximum.
He
appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeals. Pending appeal, he filed an
urgent application for admission to bail pending appeal, citing his advanced
age and health condition, and claiming the absence of any risk or possibility
of flight on his part.
The
Court of Appeals denied petitioner’s application for bail. It invoked the
bedrock principle in the matter of bail pending appeal, that the discretion to
extend bail during the course of appeal should be exercised “with grave caution
and only for strong reasons.”
Petitioner’s
motion for reconsideration was denied.
Petitioner
quotes Section 5, Rule 114 of the Rules of Court was present. Petitioner’s
theory is that, where the penalty imposed by the trial court is more than six
years but not more than 20 years and the circumstances mentioned in the third
paragraph of Section 5 are absent, bail must be granted to an
appellant pending appeal.
ISSUE:
Whether the discretionary nature of the grant
of bail pending appeal mean that bail should automatically be granted absent
any of the circumstances mentioned in the third paragraph of Section 5, Rule
114 of the Rules of Court?
HELD:
Petitioner’s stance is contrary to
fundamental considerations of procedural and substantive rules.
Petitioner actually failed to establish that
the Court of Appeals indeed acted with grave abuse of discretion. He simply relies
on his claim that the Court of Appeals should have granted bail in view of the
absence of any of the circumstances enumerated in the third paragraph of
Section 5, Rule 114 of the Rules of Court.
We
disagree.
Pending appeal of a conviction by the
Regional Trial Court of an offense not punishable by death, reclusion perpetua,
or life imprisonment, admission to bail is expressly declared to be discretionary.
Retired Court of
Appeals Justice Oscar M. Herrera, another authority in remedial law, is of the
same thinking:
Bail
is either a matter of right or of discretion. It is a matter of right when the
offense charged is not punishable by death, reclusion perpetua or
life imprisonment. On the other hand, upon conviction by the Regional Trial
Court of an offense not punishable death, reclusion perpetua or
life imprisonment, bail becomes a matter of discretion.
Similarly, if
the court imposed a penalty of imprisonment exceeding six (6) years then bail
is a matter of discretion, except when any of the enumerated circumstances
under paragraph 3 of Section 5, Rule 114 is present then bail shall be denied. (emphasis supplied)
In
the first situation, bail is a matter of sound judicial discretion. This means
that, if none of the circumstances mentioned in the third paragraph of Section
5, Rule 114 is present, the appellate court has the discretion to grant or deny
bail.
On
the other hand, in the second situation, the appellate court exercises a more
stringent discretion, that is, to carefully ascertain whether any of the
enumerated circumstances in fact exists. If it so determines, it has
no other option except to deny or revoke bail pending appeal.
Given
these two distinct scenarios, therefore, any application for bail pending
appeal should be viewed from the perspective of two stages: (1) the
determination of discretion stage, where the appellate court must determine
whether any of the circumstances in the third paragraph of Section 5, Rule 114
is present; this will establish whether or not the appellate court will
exercise sound discretion or stringent discretion in resolving the application
for bail pending appeal and (2) the exercise of discretion stage where,
assuming the appellant’s case falls within the first scenario allowing the
exercise of sound discretion, the appellate court may consider all relevant
circumstances, other than those mentioned in the third paragraph of Section 5,
Rule 114, including the demands of equity and justice; on the basis
thereof, it may either allow or disallow bail.
A finding that none
of the said circumstances is present will not automatically result in the grant
of bail. Such finding will simply authorize the court to use the less stringent
sound discretion approach.
However, judicial
discretion has been defined as “choice.” Choice
occurs where, between “two alternatives or among a possibly infinite number (of
options),” there is “more than one possible outcome, with the selection of the
outcome left to the decision maker.” On the other
hand, the establishment of a clearly defined rule of action is the end of
discretion. Thus, by
severely clipping the appellate court’s discretion and relegating that
tribunal to a mere fact-finding body in applications for bail pending appeal in
all instances where the penalty imposed by the trial court on the appellant is
imprisonment exceeding six years, petitioner’s theory effectively renders
nugatory the provision that “upon conviction by the Regional Trial Court of
an offense not punishable by death, reclusion perpetua, or life
imprisonment, admission to bail is discretionary.”
The
aforementioned provisions were reproduced as Sections 3 to 6, Rule 114 of the
1964 Rules of Criminal Procedure and then of the 1985 Rules of Criminal
Procedure. They were modified in 1988 to read as follows:
Sec. 3. Bail, a matter of right;
exception. — All persons in custody, shall before final conviction be
entitled to bail as a matter of right, except those charged with a capital
offense or an offense which, under the law at the time of its commission and at
the time of the application for bail, is punishable by reclusion perpetua,
when evidence of guilt is strong.
Hence,
for the guidelines of the bench and bar with respect to future as well as
pending cases before the trial courts, this Court en banc lays down
the following policies concerning theeffectivity of the bail of the
accused, to wit:
2) When an
accused is charged with a capital offense or an offense which under the law at
the time of its commission and at the time of the application for bail is
punishable by reclusion perpetua and is out on bail, and after
trial is convicted by the trial court of a lesser offense than that charged in
the complaint or information, the same rule set forth in the preceding
paragraph shall be applied;
Amendments
were further introduced in Administrative Circular No. 12-94 dated August 16,
1994 which brought about important changes in the said rules as follows:
SECTION
5. Bail, when discretionary. — Upon conviction by the
Regional Trial Court of an offense not punishable by death, reclusion perpetua or
life imprisonment, the court, on application, may admit the accused to bail.
Denial of bail pending appeal is
“a matter of wise discretion.”
Section 13, Article II of the
Constitution provides:
SEC.
13. All persons, except those charged with offenses punishable by reclusion perpetua when
evidence of guilt is strong, shall, before conviction, be bailable by
sufficient sureties, or be released on recognizance as may be provided by law.
x x x (emphasis supplied)
After
conviction by the trial court, the presumption of innocence terminates and,
accordingly, the constitutional right to bail ends. From then on,
the grant of bail is subject to judicial discretion. At the risk of being
repetitious, such discretion must be exercised with grave caution and only for
strong reasons.
WHEREFORE, the petition is hereby DISMISSED.
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