ZACARIAS VILLAVICENCIO, ET AL v.

JUSTO LUKBAN, ET AL
FACTS:
Justo Lukban as Manila City's Mayor together with Anton Hohmann, the city's Chief of Police,
took custody of about 170 women at the night of October 25, 1918 without the womens
knowledge and consent and thereafter were shipped to Mindanao specifically in Davao where
they were signed as laborers in a banana plantation. Said women are inmates of the houses of
prostitution situated in Gardenia Street, in the district of Sampaloc.

The purpose of sending this women to davao is to exterminate vice, ordered the
segregated district for women of ill repute, which had been permitted for a number of
years.

Some of the women were able to escape and return to Manila. The attorney for the relatives and
friends of a considerable number of the deportees presented an application for heabes corpus to
the Supreme Court.
The City of Manila Mayor and police moved to dismiss the case saying that those women were
already out of their jurisdiction and that, it should be filed in the city of Davao instead.
ISSUE RELEVANT TO SECTION 1 ARTICLE II of the Constitution
1. WHETHER OR NOT MAYOR LUKBAN WHO IS AN OFFICER OF THE STATE, TO
ERADICATE VICES IN ITS CITY HAVE THE RIGHT TO DEPORT SAID WOMEN OF ILLREPUTE?
OTHER ISSUE
2. WHETHER OR NOT THE CITY OF MANILA DOES NOT HAVE A JURISDICTION TO
ISSUE A WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS TO DAVAO CITY TO PRODUCE THE BODY OF
THE WOMEN SINCE IT IS OUT OF THEIR JURISDICTION AND THUS, DISOBEYING
THE WRIT ISSUED BY THE COURT TO PRODUCE THE BODY OF THE WOMEN?
HELD:

The petition was granted. Respondent Lukban is found in contempt of court for not
following the order of the court to produce the body of the women and shall pay into the office of
the clerk of the Supreme Court within five days the sum of one hundred pesos (P100)
RATIO:
1. On the first issue, the courts decision is based on the principle of Republicanism wherein
Ours is a government of laws and not of men

Law defines power. Centuries ago Magna Charta decreed thatNo freeman shall be taken, or
imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or
exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him nor condemn him, but by lawful
judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. No official, no matter how high, is above the
law. The courts are the forum which functionate to safeguard individual liberty and to punish
official transgressors
2. On the second issue, the court believed that the true principle should be that, if the
respondent (Mayor Lukban) is within the jurisdiction of the court and has it in his power to obey
the order of the court and thus to undo the wrong that he has inflicted, he should be compelled to
do so. The writ of habeas corpus was devised and exists as a speedy and effectual remedy to
relieve persons from unlawful restraint, and as the best and only sufficient defense of personal
freedom. Any further rights of the parties are left untouched by decision on the writ, whose
principal purpose is to set the individual at liberty.
3. In other words, If the mayor and the chief of police, acting under no authority of law,
could deport these women from the city of Manila to Davao, the same officials must
necessarily have the same means to return them from Davao to Manila. The respondents,
within the reach of process, may not be permitted to restrain a fellow citizen of her liberty
by forcing her to change her domicile and to avow the act with impunity in the courts,
while the person who has lost her birthright of liberty has no effective recourse. The great
writ of liberty may not thus be easily evaded.
PEOPLE VS HERNANDEZ
Facts:
About March 15, 1945, Amado Hernandez and other appellants were accused of conspiring,
confederating and cooperating with each other, as well as with the thirty-one (31) defendants
charged in the criminal cases of the Court of First Instance of Manila. They were accused of
being members of PKP Community Party of the Philippines which was actively engaged in an
armed rebellion against the government of the Philippines. With the party of HUKBALAHAP
(Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa mga Hapon), they committed the crime of rebellion causing murder,
pillage, looting plunder, etc., enumerated in 13 attacks on government forces or civilians by
HUKS.
Crime Committed:
Rebellion with multiple murder, arsons and robberies
Contention of the State:
The government, headed by the Solicitor General, argued that the gravity of the crime
committed required the denial of bail. Moreover, the complex crime charged by the government

against Hernandez has been successfully imposed with other arrested communist leaders and was
sentenced to life imprisonment.
Contention of the Accused:
An appeal prosecuted by the defendants regarding the judgment rendered by the CFI in
Manila that rebellion cannot be a complex crime with murder, arson or robbery.
Ruling:
The court ruled that murder, arson, and robbery are mere ingredient of the crime of
rebellion as means necessary for the perpetration of the offense. Such common offense is
absorbed or inherent of the crime of rebellion. Inasmuch as the acts specified in Article 135
constitutes, one single crime it follows that said acts offer no occasion for the application of
Article 48 which requires therefore the commission of at least two crimes.
*** HERNANDEZ DOCTRINE: Rebellion cannot be complexed with common crimes
such as killings, destruction of property, etc., committed on the occasion and in furtherance
thereof. The thinking is not anymore correct more so that there is no legal basis for such rule
now. Rebellion constitutes ONLY ONE CRIME. ***
Enrile vs Salazar
G.R. No. 92163
June 5, 1990
Facts:
In the afternoon of February 27, 1990, Senate Minority Floor Leader Juan Ponce Enrile was
arrested by law enforcement officers led by Director Alfredo Lim of the National Bureau of
Investigation on the strength of a warrant issued by Hon. Jaime Salazar of the Regional Trial
Court of Quezon City Branch 103, in Criminal Case No. 9010941.
The warrant had issued on an information signed and earlier that day filed by a panel of
prosecutors composed of Senior State Prosecutor Aurelio C. Trampe, State Prosecutor Ferdinand
R. Abesamis and Assistant City Prosecutor Eulogio Mananquil, Jr., charging Senator Enrile, the
spouses Rebecco and Erlinda Panlilio, and Gregorio Honasan with the crime of rebellion with
murder and multiple frustrated murder allegedly committed during the period of the failed coup
attempt from November 29 to December 10, 1990.
Senator Enrile was taken to and held overnight at the NBI headquarters on Taft Avenue, Manila,
without bail, none having been recommended in the information and none fixed in the arrest
warrant. The following morning, February 28, 1990, he was brought to Camp Tomas Karingal in
Quezon City where he was given over to the custody of the Superintendent of the Northern

Police District, Brig. Gen. Edgardo Dula Torres.

On the same date of February 28, 1990, Senator Enrile, through counsel, filed the petition for
habeas corpus herein (which was followed by a supplemental petition filed on March 2, 1990),
alleging that he was deprived of his constitutional rights.
Issue:
(a) Whether the petitioner has committed complex crimes (delito compleio) arising from an
offense being a necessary means for committing another, which is referred to in the second
clause of Article 48, Revised Penal Code?
Held:
There is one other reason and a fundamental one at that why Article 48 of the Penal Code cannot
be applied in the case at bar. If murder were not complexed with rebellion, and the two crimes
were punished separately (assuming that this could be done), the following penalties would be
imposable upon the movant, namely: (1) for the crime of rebellion, a fine not exceeding P20,000
and prision mayor, in the corresponding period, depending upon the modifying circumstances
present, but never exceeding 12 years of prision mayor, and (2) for the crime of murder,
reclusion temporal in its maximum period to death, depending upon the modifying circumstances
present. In other words, in the absence of aggravating circumstances, the extreme penalty could
not be imposed upon him. However, under Article 48 said penalty would have to be meted out to
him, even in the absence of a single aggravating circumstance. Thus, said provision, if construed
in conformity with the theory of the prosecution, would be unfavorable to the movant.
The plaint of petitioner's counsel that he is charged with a crime that does not exist in the statute
books, while technically correct so far as the Court has 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. Read in the context of Hernandez, the information does indeed
charge the petitioner with a crime defined and punished by the Revised Penal Code: simple
rebellion.
Petitioner finally claims that he was denied the right to bail. In the light of the Court's
reaffirmation of Hernandez as applicable to petitioner's case, and of the logical and necessary
corollary that the information against him should be considered as charging only the crime of
simple rebellion, which is bailable before conviction, that must now be accepted as a correct
proposition. But the question remains: Given the facts from which this case arose, was a petition
for habeas corpus in this Court the appropriate vehicle for asserting a right to bail or vindicating
its denial? The criminal case before the respondent Judge was the normal venue for invoking the
petitioner's right to have provisional liberty pending trial and judgment. The original jurisdiction

to grant or deny bail rested with said respondent. The correct course was for petitioner to invoke
that jurisdiction by filing a petition to be admitted to bail, claiming a right to bail per se by
reason of the weakness of the evidence against him. Only after that remedy was denied by the
trial court should the review jurisdiction of this Court have been invoked, and even then, not
without first applying to the Court of Appeals if appropriate relief was also available there.
The Court reiterates that based on the doctrine enunciated in People vs. Hernandez, the
questioned information filed against petitioners Juan Ponce Enrile and the spouses Rebecco and
Erlinda Panlilio must be read as charging simple rebellion only, hence said petitioners are
entitled to bail, before final conviction, as a matter of right. The Court's earlier grant of bail to
petitioners being merely provisional in character, the proceedings in both cases are ordered
remanded to the respondent Judge to fix the amount of bail to be posted by the petitioners. Once
bail is fixed by said respondent for any of the petitioners, the corresponding bail bond flied with
this Court shall become functus oficio. No pronouncement as to costs.
PEOPLE VS UMALI
Facts:
On the eve of the election, at the house of Pasumbals father, Congressman Umali instructed
Pasumbal to contact the Huks through Commander Abeng so that Punzalan would be killed. It
would seem that Umali and Pasumbal had a feeling that Punzalan was going to win in the
election and that his death was the surest way to eliminate him from the electoral fight.
In the evening of the same day, Pasumbal reported to Umali about his conference with
Commander Abeng, saying that the latter was agreeable to the proposition and even outlines the
manner of attack.
After waiting for sometimes, Abeng and his troops numbering about fifty, armed with garlands
and carbines, arrived. Congressman Umali, holding a revolver, was seen in the company of Huk
Commander Torio and about 30 armed men. The shots were heard. Afterwards they saw Umali
and his companions leave in the direction of Taguan, by way of railroad tracks.
Issue: Whether or not the crime is of rebellion or sedition.
Held:
The crime committed were not rebellion but rather that of sedition. The purpose of the raid and
the act of the raiders is rising publicly and taking up arms was not exactly against the
Government and for the purpose of doing things defined in Article 134 of the RPC.
The raiders did not even attack the Presidencia, the seat of the 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 who was then
mayor of Tiaong.
***Common crimes are not absorbed in sedition***
People vs. Romualdez
Facts:
Case of Bar Exam where the scores of a certain Mabunay were changed.
On the composition of a bar candidate, the grades 73%-Civil Law and 64%-Remedial Law were
written by an employee of the SC, after striking out the grade of 63% and 58%.
ISSUE:
WON the altered grades were public or official documents.
HELD:
The examination of candidates for admission to the bar is a judicial function. The alterations
made in such papers, under the circumstances proven in this case, of the grades given to them by
the correctors, constitute the crime of falsification of public documents.
The acts of falsification are
1. Making alterations on genuine document,
2. Making it appear that correctors had participated in blotting out the grades and
3. Attributing to the correctors statements other than those made by them.