Source: http://lawlibrary.chanrobles.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52983:gr-169364-2009&catid=1522&Itemid=566
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 11:51:45+00:00

Document:
G.R. No. 169364 - People of the Philippines v. Evangeline Siton y sacil, et al.
PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, Petitioner, v. EVANGELINE SITON y SACIL and KRYSTEL KATE SAGARANO y MEFANIA, Respondents.
' Martin Luther King, Jr.
Assailed in this Petition for Review on Certiorari is the July 29, 2005 Order1 of Branch 11, Davao City Regional Trial Court in Special Civil Case No. 30-500-2004 granting respondents' Petition for Certiorari and declaring paragraph 2 of Article 202 of the Revised Penal Code unconstitutional.
Any person found guilty of any of the offenses covered by this articles shall be punished by arresto menor or a fine not exceeding 200 pesos, and in case of recidivism, by arresto mayor in its medium period to prision correccional in its minimum period or a fine ranging from 200 to 2,000 pesos, or both, in the discretion of the court.
Instead of submitting their counter-affidavits as directed, respondents filed separate Motions to Quash3 on the ground that Article 202 (2) is unconstitutional for being vague and overbroad.
Respondents thus filed an original petition for certiorari and prohibition with the Regional Trial Court of Davao City,6 directly challenging the constitutionality of the anti-vagrancy law, claiming that the definition of the crime of vagrancy under Article 202 (2), apart from being vague, results as well in an arbitrary identification of violators, since the definition of the crime includes in its coverage persons who are otherwise performing ordinary peaceful acts. They likewise claimed that Article 202 (2) violated the equal protection clause under the Constitution because it discriminates against the poor and unemployed, thus permitting an arbitrary and unreasonable classification.
The State, through the Office of the Solicitor General, argued that pursuant to the Court's ruling in Estrada v. Sandiganbayan,7 the overbreadth and vagueness doctrines apply only to free speech cases and not to penal statutes. It also asserted that Article 202 (2) must be presumed valid and constitutional, since the respondents failed to overcome this presumption.
WHEREFORE, PRESCINDING FROM THE FOREGOING, the instant Petition is hereby GRANTED. Paragraph 2 of Article 202 of the Revised Penal Code is hereby declared unconstitutional and the Order of the court a quo, dated April 28, 2004, denying the petitioners' Motion to Quash is set aside and the said court is ordered to dismiss the subject criminal cases against the petitioners pending before it.
The U.S. Supreme Court's justifications for striking down the Jacksonville Vagrancy Ordinance are equally applicable to paragraph 2 of Article 202 of the Revised Penal Code.
Indeed, to authorize a police officer to arrest a person for being "found loitering about public or semi-public buildings or places or tramping or wandering about the country or the streets without visible means of support" offers too wide a latitude for arbitrary determinations as to who should be arrested and who should not.
Loitering about and wandering have become national pastimes particularly in these times of recession when there are many who are "without visible means of support" not by reason of choice but by force of circumstance as borne out by the high unemployment rate in the entire country.
The application of the Anti-Vagrancy Law, crafted in the 1930s, to our situation at present runs afoul of the equal protection clause of the constitution as it offers no reasonable classification between those covered by the law and those who are not.
Class legislation is such legislation which denies rights to one which are accorded to others, or inflicts upon one individual a more severe penalty than is imposed upon another in like case offending.
Petitioner argues that every statute is presumed valid and all reasonable doubts should be resolved in favor of its constitutionality; that, citing Romualdez v. Sandiganbayan,13 the overbreadth and vagueness doctrines have special application to free-speech cases only and are not appropriate for testing the validity of penal statutes; that respondents failed to overcome the presumed validity of the statute, failing to prove that it was vague under the standards set out by the Courts; and that the State may regulate individual conduct for the promotion of public welfare in the exercise of its police power.
On the other hand, respondents argue against the limited application of the overbreadth and vagueness doctrines. They insist that Article 202 (2) on its face violates the constitutionally-guaranteed rights to due process and the equal protection of the laws; that the due process vagueness standard, as distinguished from the free speech vagueness doctrine, is adequate to declare Article 202 (2) unconstitutional and void on its face; and that the presumption of constitutionality was adequately overthrown.
Any person found guilty of any of the offenses covered by this article shall be punished by arresto menor or a fine not exceeding 200 pesos, and in case of recidivism, by arresto mayor in its medium period to prision correccional in its minimum period or a fine ranging from 200 to 2,000 pesos, or both, in the discretion of the court.
In the instant case, the assailed provision is paragraph (2), which defines a vagrant as any person found loitering about public or semi-public buildings or places, or tramping or wandering about the country or the streets without visible means of support. This provision was based on the second clause of Section 1 of Act No. 519 which defined "vagrant" as "every person found loitering about saloons or dramshops or gambling houses, or tramping or straying through the country without visible means of support." The second clause was essentially retained with the modification that the places under which the offense might be committed is now expressed in general terms - public or semi-public places.
Living under a rule of law entails various suppositions, one of which is that "[all persons] are entitled to be informed as to what the State commands or forbids." Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U. S. 451, 306 U. S. 453.
Lanzetta is one of a well recognized group of cases insisting that the law give fair notice of the offending conduct. See Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U. S. 385, 269 U. S. 391; Cline v. Frink Dairy Co., 274 U. S. 445; United States v. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U. S. 81. In the field of regulatory statutes governing business activities, where the acts limited are in a narrow category, greater leeway is allowed. Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. United States, 342 U. S. 337; United States v. National Dairy Products Corp., 372 U. S. 29; United States v. Petrillo, 332 U. S. 1.
The poor among us, the minorities, the average householder, are not in business and not alerted to the regulatory schemes of vagrancy laws; and we assume they would have no understanding of their meaning and impact if they read them. Nor are they protected from being caught in the vagrancy net by the necessity of having a specific intent to commit an unlawful act. See Screws v. United States, 325 U. S. 91; Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. United States, supra.
The Jacksonville ordinance makes criminal activities which, by modern standards, are normally innocent. "Nightwalking" is one. Florida construes the ordinance not to make criminal one night's wandering, Johnson v. State, 202 So.2d at 855, only the "habitual" wanderer or, as the ordinance describes it, "common night walkers." We know, however, from experience that sleepless people often walk at night, perhaps hopeful that sleep-inducing relaxation will result.
Luis Munoz-Marin, former Governor of Puerto Rico, commented once that "loafing" was a national virtue in his Commonwealth, and that it should be encouraged. It is, however, a crime in Jacksonville.
Persons "wandering or strolling" from place to place have been extolled by Walt Whitman and Vachel Lindsay. The qualification "without any lawful purpose or object" may be a trap for innocent acts. Persons "neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting . . . places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served" would literally embrace many members of golf clubs and city clubs.
Walkers and strollers and wanderers may be going to or coming from a burglary. Loafers or loiterers may be "casing" a place for a holdup. Letting one's wife support him is an intra-family matter, and normally of no concern to the police. Yet it may, of course, be the setting for numerous crimes.
The difficulty is that these activities are historically part of the amenities of life as we have known them. They are not mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. These unwritten amenities have been, in part, responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent, and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits, rather than hushed, suffocating silence.
"The common ground which brings such a motley assortment of human troubles before the magistrates in vagrancy-type proceedings is the procedural laxity which permits 'conviction' for almost any kind of conduct and the existence of the House of Correction as an easy and convenient dumping-ground for problems that appear to have no other immediate solution." Foote, Vagrancy-Type Law and Its Administration, 104 U.Pa.L.Rev. 603, 631.
Another aspect of the ordinance's vagueness appears when we focus not on the lack of notice given a potential offender, but on the effect of the unfettered discretion it places in the hands of the Jacksonville police. Caleb Foote, an early student of this subject, has called the vagrancy-type law as offering "punishment by analogy." Such crimes, though long common in Russia, are not compatible with our constitutional system.
The underlying principles in Papachristou are that: 1) the assailed Jacksonville ordinance "fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute;" and 2) it encourages or promotes opportunities for the application of discriminatory law enforcement.
Rogues and vagabonds, or dissolute persons who go about begging; common gamblers, persons who use juggling or unlawful games or plays, common drunkards, common night walkers, thieves, pilferers or pickpockets, traders in stolen property, lewd, wanton and lascivious persons, keepers of gambling places, common railers and brawlers, persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafers, disorderly persons, persons neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting houses of ill fame, gaming houses, or places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served, persons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children shall be deemed vagrants and, upon conviction in the Municipal Court shall be punished as provided for Class D offenses.
Thus, the U.S. Supreme Court in Jacksonville declared the ordinance unconstitutional, because such activities or habits as nightwalking, wandering or strolling around without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafing, habitual spending of time at places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served, and living upon the earnings of wives or minor children, which are otherwise common and normal, were declared illegal. But these are specific acts or activities not found in Article 202 (2). The closest to Article 202 (2) - "any person found loitering about public or semi-public buildings or places, or tramping or wandering about the country or the streets without visible means of support" - from the Jacksonville ordinance, would be "persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object." But these two acts are still not the same: Article 202 (2) is qualified by "without visible means of support" while the Jacksonville ordinance prohibits wandering or strolling "without any lawful purpose or object," which was held by the U.S. Supreme Court to constitute a "trap for innocent acts."
As applied to the instant case, it appears that the police authorities have been conducting previous surveillance operations on respondents prior to their arrest. On the surface, this satisfies the probable cause requirement under our Constitution. For this reason, we are not moved by respondents' trepidation that Article 202 (2) could have been a source of police abuse in their case.
Since the Revised Penal Code took effect in 1932, no challenge has ever been made upon the constitutionality of Article 202 except now. Instead, throughout the years, we have witnessed the streets and parks become dangerous and unsafe, a haven for beggars, harassing "watch-your-car" boys, petty thieves and robbers, pickpockets, swindlers, gangs, prostitutes, and individuals performing acts that go beyond decency and morality, if not basic humanity. The streets and parks have become the training ground for petty offenders who graduate into hardened and battle-scarred criminals. Everyday, the news is rife with reports of innocent and hardworking people being robbed, swindled, harassed or mauled - if not killed - by the scourge of the streets. Blue collar workers are robbed straight from withdrawing hard-earned money from the ATMs (automated teller machines); students are held up for having to use and thus exhibit publicly their mobile phones; frail and helpless men are mauled by thrill-seeking gangs; innocent passers-by are stabbed to death by rowdy drunken men walking the streets; fair-looking or pretty women are stalked and harassed, if not abducted, raped and then killed; robbers, thieves, pickpockets and snatchers case streets and parks for possible victims; the old are swindled of their life savings by conniving streetsmart bilkers and con artists on the prowl; beggars endlessly pester and panhandle pedestrians and commuters, posing a health threat and putting law-abiding drivers and citizens at risk of running them over. All these happen on the streets and in public places, day or night.
The streets must be protected. Our people should never dread having to ply them each day, or else we can never say that we have performed our task to our brothers and sisters. We must rid the streets of the scourge of humanity, and restore order, peace, civility, decency and morality in them.
Criminally, public order laws encompass a whole range of acts - from public indecencies and immoralities, to public nuisances, to disorderly conduct. The acts punished are made illegal by their offensiveness to society's basic sensibilities and their adverse effect on the quality of life of the people of society. For example, the issuance or making of a bouncing check is deemed a public nuisance, a crime against public order that must be abated.33 As a matter of public policy, the failure to turn over the proceeds of the sale of the goods covered by a trust receipt or to return said goods, if not sold, is a public nuisance to be abated by the imposition of penal sanctions.34 Thus, public nuisances must be abated because they have the effect of interfering with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property by members of a community.
Article 202 (2) does not violate the equal protection clause; neither does it discriminate against the poor and the unemployed. Offenders of public order laws are punished not for their status, as for being poor or unemployed, but for conducting themselves under such circumstances as to endanger the public peace or cause alarm and apprehension in the community. Being poor or unemployed is not a license or a justification to act indecently or to engage in immoral conduct.
Vagrancy must not be so lightly treated as to be considered constitutionally offensive. It is a public order crime which punishes persons for conducting themselves, at a certain place and time which orderly society finds unusual, under such conditions that are repugnant and outrageous to the common standards and norms of decency and morality in a just, civilized and ordered society, as would engender a justifiable concern for the safety and well-being of members of the community.
Instead of taking an active position declaring public order laws unconstitutional, the State should train its eye on their effective implementation, because it is in this area that the Court perceives difficulties. Red light districts abound, gangs work the streets in the wee hours of the morning, dangerous robbers and thieves ply their trade in the trains stations, drunken men terrorize law-abiding citizens late at night and urinate on otherwise decent corners of our streets. Rugby-sniffing individuals crowd our national parks and busy intersections. Prostitutes wait for customers by the roadside all around the metropolis, some even venture in bars and restaurants. Drug-crazed men loiter around dark avenues waiting to pounce on helpless citizens. Dangerous groups wander around, casing homes and establishments for their next hit. The streets must be made safe once more. Though a man's house is his castle,35 outside on the streets, the king is fair game.
The dangerous streets must surrender to orderly society.
It must not be forgotten that police power is an inherent attribute of sovereignty. It has been defined as the power vested by the Constitution in the legislature to make, ordain, and establish all manner of wholesome and reasonable laws, statutes and ordinances, either with penalties or without, not repugnant to the Constitution, as they shall judge to be for the good and welfare of the commonwealth, and for the subjects of the same. The power is plenary and its scope is vast and pervasive, reaching and justifying measures for public health, public safety, public morals, and the general welfare.38 As an obvious police power measure, Article 202 (2) must therefore be viewed in a constitutional light.
WHEREFORE, the petition is GRANTED. The Decision of Branch 11 of the Regional Trial Court of Davao City in Special Civil Case No. 30-500-2004 declaring Article 202, paragraph 2 of the Revised Penal Code UNCONSTITUTIONAL is REVERSED and SET ASIDE.
Let the proceedings in Criminal Cases Nos. 115,716-C-2003 and 115,717-C-2003 thus continue.
* In lieu of Associate Justice Antonio Eduardo B. Nachura per raffle dated September 16, 2009.
1 Records, pp. 108-113; penned by Judge Virginia HofileÃ±a-Europa.
4 Id. at 31-34; penned by Presiding Judge Romeo C. Abarracin.
6 Id. at 31. Docketed as Special Civil Case No. 30-500-2004 and raffled to Branch 11 of the Regional Trial Court of Davao City.
7 G.R. No. 148560, November 19, 2001, 369 SCRA 394.
9 405 U.S. 156, 31 L.Ed. 2d 110 (1972).
13 G.R. No. 152259, July 29, 2004, 435 SCRA 371.
14 21 Am Jur '' 12, 13.
15 Musser v. Utah, 333 U.S. 95; Giaccio v. Pennsylvania, 382 U.S. 339; U.S. v. Brewer, 139 U.S. 278, 35 L.Ed. 190, 193.
16 Estrada v. Sandiganbayan, supra note 6.
19 57 P.L.J. 421 (1982).
21 Supra note 8 at 405 U.S. 163-171.
22 CIVIL CODE, Article 3.
Petitioner next argues that we must read '924(a)(1)(D) to require knowledge of the law because of our interpretation of "willfully" in two other contexts. In certain cases involving willful violations of the tax laws, we have concluded that the jury must find that the defendant was aware of the specific provision of the tax code that he was charged with violating. See, e.g., Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192, 201 (1991). Similarly, in order to satisfy a willful violation in Ratzlaf, we concluded that the jury had to find that the defendant knew that his structuring of cash transactions to avoid a reporting requirement was unlawful. See 510 U.S., at 138, 149. Those cases, however, are readily distinguishable. Both the tax cases and Ratzlaf involved highly technical statutes that presented the danger of ensnaring individuals engaged in apparently innocent conduct.As a result, we held that these statutes "carv[e] out an exception to the traditional rule" that ignorance of the law is no excuse and require that the defendant have knowledge of the law. The danger of convicting individuals engaged in apparently innocent activity that motivated our decisions in the tax cases and Ratzlaf is not present here because the jury found that this petitioner knew that his conduct was unlawful.
24 CONSTITUTION, Art. III, Sec. 2.
25 79 C.J.S., Search and Seizures, Sec. 74, 865.
26 People v. Molina, G.R. No. 133917, February 19, 2001, 352 SCRA 174.
27 People v. Bolasa, G.R. No. 125754, December 22, 1999, 321 SCRA 459.
28 CONSTITUTION, Article II, Section 9: The State shall promote a just and dynamic social order that will ensure the prosperity and independence of the nation and free the people from poverty through policies that provide adequate social services, promote full employment, a rising standard of living, and an improved quality of life for all.
29 CIVIL CODE, Article 19.
30 Sea Commercial Company Inc. v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 122823, November 25, 1999, 319 SCRA 210.
31 Drilon v. Gaurana, No. L-35482, April 30, 1987, 149 SCRA 342.
32 CIVIL CODE, Article 704.
33 Ruiz v. People, G.R. No. 160893, November 18, 2005, 475 SCRA 476.
34 Tiomico v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 122539, March 4, 1999, 304 SCRA 216.
35 Villanueva v. Querubin, G.R. No. L-26177, 48 SCRA 345.
36 Lacson v. Executive Secretary, G.R. No. 128096, January 20, 1999, 301 SCRA 298.
37 Mano v. National Housing Authority, G.R. No. 107921, July 1, 1993, 224 SCRA 236.
38 Bernas, The 1987 Constitution of the Philippines, A Commentary, pp. 95-98 .

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