SEDITION

People v. Umali
Sentenced by trial court to: complex crime of rebellion with
multiple murder, frustrated murder, arson and robbery
Accused staged a raid in the town of Tiaong, Quezon, between 8:00
and 9:00 in the evening. Said raid took place resulting in the (1)
burning down and complete destruction of the house of Mayor Marcial
Punzalan including its content valued at P24,023; (2) the house of
Valentin Robles valued at P10,000, and (3) the house of one Mortega,
(4) the death of Patrolman Domingo Pisigan and civilians Vicente
Soriano and Leocadio Untalan, and the (5) wounding of Patrolman
Pedro Lacorte and five civilians; that during and after the burning of
the houses, some of the raiders (6) engaged in looting, robbing one
house and two Chinese stories; and that the raiders were finally
dispersed and driven from the town by the Philippine Army soldiers
stationed in the town.
Political background: Narciso Umali and Marcial Punzalan were old time
friends and belonged to the same political faction. They both helped
each other get elected as Congressman and Mayor, respectively. But,
Umali became jealous because of Punzalan's fast growing popularity
among the people of Tiaong who looked to him instead of Umali for
political guidance, leadership, and favors. In time the strain in their
relations became such that they ceased to have any dealings with
each other and they even filed mutual accusations. Umali even
convinced 26 of Punzalans policemen to go and join the Huks, but
were subsequently persuaded to give up their arms.
Then the elections approached and Punzalan ran for reelection. To
oppose him, and to clip his political wings and definitely blast his
ambition for continued power and influence in Tiaong, Umali picked
Epifanio Pasumbal, his trusted leader. The pre-election campaign and
fight waged by both factions Punzalan and Pasumbal, was intense
and bitter, even ruthless.
The result of the elections plainly showed that Punzalan was the
political master and leader in Tiaong. He beat Pasumbal by an
overwhelming majority of 2,221 votes. Naturally, Umali and Pasumbal
were keenly disappointed, and according to the evidence, adopted
measures calculated to frustrate Punzalan's victory, even as
prophesied by Umali himself in one of his pre-election speeches about
blood flowing and gold coffin.

On the eve of the election, Umali instructed Pasumbal to contact the

Huks through Commander Abeng so that Punzalan will be killed,
Pasumbal complying with the order of his Chief (Umali) went to the
mountains which were quite near the town and held a conference with
Commander Abeng. It would seem that Umali and Pasumbal had a
feeling that Punzalan was going to win in the elections the next day,
and that his death was the surest way to eliminate him from the
electoral fight.
Pasumbal reported to Umali about his conference with Commander
Abeng, saying that the latter was agreeable to the proposition and had
even outlined the manner of attack, that the Huks would enter the
town (Tiaong) under Commander Lucio and Aladin, the latter to lead
the sector towards the East; but that Commander Abeng had
suggested that the raid be postponed because Pasumbal may yet win
the election the following day, thereby rendering unnecessary the raid
and the killing of Punzalan.
It would appear from the evidence that the raid was well-planned. As a
diversionary measure, part of the attacking force was deployed toward
the camp or station of the Army (part of 8th B.C.T.) in the suburbs and
the camp was fired upon, not exactly to destroy or drive out that Army
unit but to keep it from going to the rescue and aid of the main
objective of the raid. The rest of the raiding party went toward
Punzalan's house and attacked it with automatic weapons, hand
grenades, and even with bottles filled with gasoline (popularly known
as Molotov's cocktail). It was evident that the purpose of the attack on
Punzalan's house was to kill him. Fortunately, however, and
apparently unknown to the attackers and those who designed
the raid, at six o'clock that morning of November 14th
Punzalan and his Chief of Police had left Tiaong to go to
Lucena, the capital, to report the results of the election to the
Governor.
PROPER CRIME:
We are convinced that the principal and main, tho not necessarily the
most serious, crime committed here was not rebellion but rather
that of sedition. The purpose of the raid and the act of the raiders in
rising publicly and taking up arms was not exactly against the
Government and for the purpose of doing the things defined in
Article 134 of the Revised Penal code under rebellion. The
raiders did not even attack the Presidencia, the seat of local
Government. Rather, the object was to attain by means of force,
intimidation, etc. one object, to wit, to inflict an act of hate or
revenge upon the person or property of a public official,

namely, Punzalan was then Mayor of Tiaong. Under Article 139 of

the same Code this was sufficient to constitute sedition.
As regards the crime of robbery with which appellants were charged
and of which they were convicted, we are also of the opinion that it
was not one of the purposes of the raid, which was mainly to kidnap or
kill Punzalan and destroy his house. The robberies were actually
committed by only some of the raiders, presumably dissidents, as an
afterthought, because of the opportunity offered by the confusion and
disorder resulting from the shooting and the burning of the three
houses, the articles being intended presumably to replenish the
supplies of the dissidents in the mountains. For these robberies, only
those who actually took part therein are responsible, and not the three
appellants herein.
With respect to the crime of multiple frustrated murder, while the
assault upon policeman Pedro Lacorte with a hand grenade causing
him injuries resulting in his blindness in one eye, may be regarded as
frustrated murder; the wounding of Ortega, Anselo, Rivano, Garcia and
Lector should be considered as mere physical injuries. The crimes
committed are, therefore, those of sedition, multiple murder,
arson, frustrated murder and physical injuries. The murders may
not be qualified by evident premeditation because the premeditation
was for the killing of Punzalan. The result was the killing of three others
intended by the raiders (People vs. Guillen, 47 Off). The killing may,
however, be qualified by treachery, the raiders using firearms against
which the victims were defenseless, with the aggravating circumstance
of abuse of superior strength. The three murders may be punished with
the penalty of death. However, because of lack of the necessary votes,
the penalty should be life imprisonment.
People v. Cabrera
Manila policemen arrested a woman who was a member of the
household of a Constabulary soldier. The arrest of the woman was
considered by some of the Constabulary soldiers as an outrage
committed by the policemen, and it instantly gave rise to friction
between members of Manila police department and member of the
Philippine Constabulary.
The next day, a policeman named Artemio Mojica, had an encounter
with various Constabulary soldiers which resulted in the shooting of
private Macasinag of the Constabulary. Private Macasinag was
seriously, and as afterwards appeared, mortally wounded.

The encounter between policemen Mojica and other companions of the

Manila force and private Macasinag and other companions of the
Constabulary, engendered a deep feeling of resentment on the part of
the soldiers at Santa Lucia Barracks. This resentment was soon
converted into a desire for revenge against the police force of the city
of Manila.
These constabulary soldiers fired upon the premises in Calle Real
killing and wounding several members of the Philippine Constabulary,
and even civilians.
Ruling: Sedition, in its more general sense, is the raising of commotions
or disturbances in the State. The Philippine law on the subject makes
all persons guilty of sedition who rise publicly and tumultuously in
order to obtain by force or outside of legal methods any one of vie
objects, including that of inflicting any act of hate or revenge upon the
person or property of any official or agent of the Insular Government or
of Provincial or Municipal Government. The trial court found that the
crime of sedition, as defined and punished by the law, had been
committed, and we believe that such finding is correct.
Counsel's contention that in order for there to be Sedition, the offender
should be a private citizen and the offended party a public functionary,
and that what really happened in this instance was a fight between two
armed bodies of the Philippine Government, is absolutely without
foundation. The Sedition Law makes no distinction between the
persons to which it applies. In one scene there was a fight between two
armed bodies of the Philippine Government, but it was an unequal fight
brought on by the actions of the accused.
Citing the ruling of the trial court that heard the sedition case (murder
case was tried in a separate court): Rarely in the history of criminality
in this country has there been registered a crime so villainous as that
committed by these defendants. The court is only concerned in this
case with crime of sedition. The maximum penalty prescribed is not
really commensurate with the enormity of the offense. Impelled by
hatred, employing their knowledge of military sciences which is worthy
of a better cause, and in disregard of the consequences to themselves
and their innocent loved ones, and using the means furnished to them
by the Government for the protection of life and property, they sought
by force and violence and outside of legal methods to avenge a fancied
wrong by an armed and tumultuous attack upon officials and agents of
the government of the city of Manila.
REBELLION V. SEDITION

PURPOSE

Political- to overthrow
the duly constituted
government

USE OF FIREARM

Use of firearm is an
essential ingredient of
rebellion

May be political or
social for carrying out
protest or
disobedience from a
governmental action
and not for the
purpose of
overthrowing the
government. The act
may be against a
social class.
The use of firearm is
not an essential
ingredient

US v. Tolentino
Aurelio Tolentino was charged with inciting to sedition by allegedly
making false, seditious, and inflammatory words and scurrilous libels in
Tagalog language in a theatrical work written by, and presented by him
and others at the "Teatro Libertad" entitled 'Kahapon gayon at Bukas'
(Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow).
SC: We are all agreed that the publication and presentation of the
drama directly and necessarily tend to instigate others to cabal and
meet together for unlawful purposes, and to suggest and incite
rebellious conspiracies and riots and to stir up the people against the
lawful authorities and to disturb the peace of the community and the
safety and order of the Government.
The manifest, unmistakable tendency of the play, in view of the time,
place, and manner of its presentation, was to inculcate a spirit of
hatred and enmity against the American people and the Government
of the United States in the Philippines, and we are satisfied that the
principal object and intent of its author was to incite the people of the
Philippine Islands to open and armed resistance to the constituted
authorities, and to induce them to conspire together for the secret
organization of armed forces, to be used when the opportunity
presented itself, for the purpose of overthrowing the present
Government and setting up another in its stead.
Defense: Counsel for the appellant insists that the intent of the
accused to commit the crime with which he is charged does not appear
from the evidence of record, and that the drama is, in itself, a purely

literary and artistic production wherein the legendary history of these

Islands and their future, as imagined by the author, are presented
merely for the instruction and entertainment of the public.
This contention cannot be maintained. The public presentation of the
drama took place less than two years after the establishment of the
Civil Government. The smouldering embers of a wide-spread and
dangerous insurrection were not yet entirely extinguished, and here
and there throughout the Islands occasional outbreaks still required the
use of the armed forces of the Government for their suppression.
The manner and form in which the drama was presented at such a
time and under such conditions, renders absurd the pretense that it
was merely or even principally a literary or artistic production, and the
clumsy devices, the allegorical figures, the apparent remoteness, past
and future, of the events portrayed, could not and in fact were not
intended to leave the audience in doubt as to its present and
immediate application, nor should they blind this court to the true
purpose and intent of the author and director of the play.
Espuelas v. People
Oscar Espuelas had his picture taken, making it to appear as if he were
hanging lifeless at the end of a piece of rope suspended form the limb
of the tree, when in truth and in fact, he was merely standing on a
barrel. After securing copies of his photograph, Espuelas sent copies of
same to several newspapers and weeklies of general circulation, not
only in the Province of Bohol but also throughout the Philippines and
abroad, for their publication with a suicide note or letter, wherein he
made to appear that it was written by a fictitious suicide, Alberto
Reveniera and addressed to the latter's supposed wife translation of
which letter or note in hereunder reproduced:
Dearest wife and children, bury me five meters deep. Over my grave
don't plant a cross or put floral wreaths, for I don't need them.
Please don't bury me in the lonely place. Bury me in the Catholic
cemetery. Although I have committed suicide, I still have the right to
burried among Christians.
But don't pray for me. Don't remember me, and don't feel sorry. Wipe
me out of your lives.
My dear wife, if someone asks to you why I committed suicide, tell
them I did it because I was not pleased with the administration of
Roxas. Tell the whole world about this.

And if they ask why I did not like the administration of Roxas, point out
to them the situation in Central Luzon, the Leyte.
Dear wife, write to President Truman and Churchill. Tell them that here
in the Philippines our government is infested with many Hitlers and
Mussolinis
Teach our children to burn pictures of Roxas if and when they come
across one.
I committed suicide because I am ashamed of our government under
Roxas. I cannot hold high my brows to the world with this dirty
government.
I committed suicide because I have no power to put under Juez de
Cuchillo all the Roxas people now in power. So, I sacrificed my own
self.
The latter is a scurrilous libel against the Government. It calls our
government one of crooks and dishonest persons (dirty) infested with
Nazis and a Fascistis i.e.dictators.
And the communication reveals a tendency to produce dissatisfaction
or a feeling incompatible with the disposition to remain loyal to the
government. Writings which tend to overthrow or undermine the
security of the government or to weaken the confidence of the people
in the government are against the public peace, and are criminal not
only because they tend to incite to a breach of the peace but because
they are conducive to the destruction of the very government itself.
With respect to Constitutional right to redress of grievances:
Not to be restrained is the privilege of any citizen to criticize his
government officials and to submit his criticism to the "free trade of
ideas" and to plead for its acceptance in "the competition of the
market." However, let such criticism be specific and therefore
constructive, reasoned or tempered, and not a contemptuous
condemnation of the entire government set-up. Such wholesale attack
is nothing less than an invitation to disloyalty to the government. In
the article now under examination one will find no particular
objectionable actuation of the government. It is called dirty, it is called
a dictatorship, it is called shameful, but no particular omissions or
commissions are set forth. Instead the article drip with male-violence
and hate towards the constituted authorities. It tries to arouse
animosity towards all public servants headed by President Roxas

whose pictures this appellant would burn and would teach the younger
generation to destroy.
Analyzed for meaning and weighed in its consequences the article
cannot fail to impress thinking persons that it seeks to sow the seeds
of sedition and strife. The infuriating language is not a sincere effort to
persuade, what with the writer's simulated suicide and false claim to
martyrdom and what with is failure to particularize. When the use
irritating language centers not on persuading the readers but on
creating disturbances, the rationable of free speech cannot apply and
the speaker or writer is removed from the protection of the
constitutional guaranty.
As to the object of the scurrilous libel: If it be argued that the
article does not discredit the entire governmental structure but only
President Roxas and his men, the reply is that article 142 punishes not
only all libels against the Government but also "libels against any of
the duly constituted authorities thereof." The "Roxas people" in the
Government obviously refer of least to the President, his Cabinet and
the majority of legislators to whom the adjectives dirty, Hitlers and
Mussolinis were naturally directed. On this score alone the conviction
could be upheld.
To top it all, the appellant proclaimed to his readers that he committed
suicide because he had "no power to put under juez de cuchillo all the
Roxas people now in power." Knowing, that the expression Juez de
Cuchillo means to the ordinary layman as the Law of the Knife, a
"summary and arbitrary execution by the knife", the idea intended by
the appellant to be conveyed was no other than bloody, violent and
unpeaceful methods to free the government from the administration of
Roxas and his men.
Martinez v. Morfe
There is, to be sure, a full recognition of the necessity to have
members of Congress, and likewise delegates to the Constitutional
Convention, entitled to the utmost freedom to enable them to
discharge their vital responsibilities, bowing to no other force except
the dictates of their conscience. Necessarily the utmost latitude in free
speech should be accorded them. When it comes to freedom from
arrest, however, it would amount to the creation of a privileged class,
without justification in reason, if notwithstanding their liability for a
criminal offense, they would be considered immune during their
attendance in Congress and in going to and returning from the same.
There is likely to be no dissent from the proposition that a legislator or
a delegate can perform his functions efficiently and well, without the

need for any transgression of the criminal law. Should such an

unfortunate event come to pass, he is to be treated like any other
citizen considering that there is a strong public interest in seeing to it
that crime should not go unpunished. To the fear that may be
expressed that the prosecuting arm of the government might unjustly
go after legislators belonging to the minority, it suffices to answer that
precisely all the safeguards thrown around an accused by the
Constitution, solicitous of the rights of an individual, would constitute
an obstacle to such an attempt at abuse of power. The presumption of
course is that the judiciary would main independent. It is trite to say
that in each and every manifestation of judicial endeavor, such a virtue
is of the essence.