Barcelona Criminal Law II

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G.R. No. 106922 || April 20, 2001
Franklin Drilon v. Court of Appeals and Juan Ponce Enrile
CASE DIGEST
FACTS:
After the unsuccessful coup d’état in December 1989, petitioner Drilon referred to
the Team of Prosecutors (Trampe, Abesamis, Mananquil) a letter-complaint from National
Bureau of Investigation requesting the investigation of private respondent Juan Ponce
Enrile for his alleged participation in the said coup attempt.
The Team of Prosecutors issued a subpoena to private respondent ordering to
submit his counter-affidavit to the letter-complaint. Instead, private respondent filed a
petition for summary dismissal of the charge against him and an urgent motion praying to
give him five days before filing an information against him to enable him to make
appropriate legal action.
On February 27, 1990, the Team of Prosecutors filed an information before the
Regional Trial Court of Quezon City charging the respondent of complex crime of rebellion
with murder and frustrated murder. Likewise, they filed an information charging the private
respondent of obstruction of justice for harboring an alleged felon under Presidential
Decree No. 1829. Later, lawyers of respondent discovered the information against the
latter was filed and withdrawn for re-filing.
On September 13, 1990, the Court ruled in Enrile vs. Amin that the filing of the
separate information violated the Hernandez doctrine and ordered the quashal of the said
information. As a consequence, respondent filed a complaint for damages docketed as
Civil Case No. 90-2327 before the Regional Trial Court of Makati City while the rebellion
case was still pending litigation. The complaint accused the petitioners of bad faith in filing
the information for rebellion complexed with murder and frustrated murder. [Malicious
prosecution]
On October 9, 1990, petitioners filed a Motion to Dismiss arguing the failure of the
complaint to state a cause of action. They claimed there was no allegations of any
actionable wrong constituting a violation of any of the legal rights of respondent. In
addition, they put up good faith and immunity from suit as defense. On October 8, 1991,
the respondent court denied the Motion to Dismiss and required petitioners to file their
answer and to present their evidence in support of their defenses in a full-blown trial.

ISSUES:
1. Whether the petitioners should be held accountable for knowingly filing an
inexistent offense.
2. Whether or not respondent was denied by the petitioners the right to be notified
before the criminal prosecution against him.
Barcelona Criminal Law II
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RULING:
1. In Enrile vs. Salazar, the court ruled that the plaint of petitioners (herein private
respondent) counsel that he is charged with a crime that does not exist in the
statute books, while technically correct insofar as the Court ruled that rebellion may
not be complexed with other offenses committed on the occasion thereof, must
therefore be dismissed as a mere flight of rhetoric. The information does indeed
charge the petitioner with a crime defined and punished by the Revised Penal
Code: simple rebellion.
Despite its defect, the information filed by petitioners remained valid as it charges
an offense against respondent

2. The said allegations still fail to maintain a cause of action against the petitioners.
In the case at bar, the Court failed to see any right of the respondent supposedly
violated by the petitioners. Nowhere in the statute books is a prospective accused
given the right to be notified beforehand of the filing of an information against him.
Likewise, the withdrawal and the subsequent re-filing of the information do not
constitute an actionable wrong inasmuch as the filing or re-filing of an information
lies within the discretion of the prosecutor who must act independently of the
affected parties.