GERARDO A. MOSQUERA vs. HON. DELIA H.
PANGANIBAN, in her capacity as Presiding Judge of the Regional Trial Court,
Branch 64, City of Makati, Metro Manila, HON. FELICIDAD Y. NAVARRO-QUIAMBAO, in
her capacity as Presiding Judge of the Metropolitan Trial Court, Branch 65,
City of Makati, Metro Manila, and MARK F. JALANDONI, G.R. No. 121180, July 5,
1996.
“x x x.
Beyond the personality of the private respondent to seek a
reconsideration of the order of dismissal of the MeTC, the central issue in
this case is whether in ordering the reinstatement of the information, the MeTC
acted with grave abuse of discretion.
The MeTC invoked its authority under Crespo v. Mogul 10 to
approve the withdrawal of informations after they have been filed in court,
thus:
[O]nce a complaint or information
is filed in Court any disposition of the case as its dismissal or the
conviction or acquittal of the accused rests in the sound discretion of the
Court. Although the fiscal retains the direction and control of the prosecution
of criminal cases even while the case is already in Court he cannot impose his
opinion on the trial court. The Court is the best and sole judge on what to do
with the case before it. The determination of the case is within its exclusive
jurisdiction and competence. A motion to dismiss the case filed by the fiscal
should be addressed to the Court who has the option to grant or deny the same.
It does not matter if this is done before or after the arraignment of the
accused or that the motion was filed after a reinvestigation or upon
instruction of the Secretary of Justice who reviewed the records of the
investigation.
Petitioner argues that by its order of October 13, 1994, the
MeTC already exercised its authority under the Mogul doctrine to grant or deny
the public prosecutor's motion to withdraw the information and was thereafter
precluded from changing its mind in absence of a motion for reconsideration
filed by the public prosecutor.
This argument is untenable. The court could have denied the
public prosecutor's 'motion for the withdrawal of the information against
petitioner, and there would have been no question of its power to do so. If it
could do that, so could it reconsider what it had ordered. Every court has the
power and indeed the duty to review and amend or reverse its findings and
conclusions when its attention is timely called to any error or defect
therein. 11 In this case, the motion for
reconsideration was timely filed by the private prosecutor who, as already
discussed, has the legal personality to do so.
Indeed, the MeTC must have realized that it had
surrendered its exclusive prerogative regarding the withdrawal of informations
by accepting public prosecutor's say-so that the prosecution had no basis to
prosecute petitioner. 12Its order of October 13,
1994 was based mainly on its notion that the motion of the Trial Fiscal should
be accorded weight and significance as it was premised on the findings [of the
Department of Justice] that the filing of the information in question has no
legal basis."
This certainly was not the exercise of discretion. As we
said in Martinez, "whether to approve or disapprove the stand
taken by the prosecution is not the exercise of discretion required in cases
like this [under the Mogul ruling] . . . What was
imperatively required was the trial judge's own assessment of such evidence, it
not being sufficient for the valid and proper exercise of judicial discretion
merely to accept the prosecution's word for its supposed insufficiency." 13
Unfortunately, just as in allowing the withdrawal of the
information by the public prosecutor, the MeTC did not make an independent
evaluation of the evidence, neither did it do so in granting the private
prosecutor's motion for reconsideration. In its order dated December 29,
1994, the MeTC simply stated that it was reinstating the case against
petitioner because [a]fter carefully weighing the arguments of the parties in
support of their respective claims, the Court believes that the weight of the
evidence and the jurisprudence on the matter which is now presented for
resolution heavily leaned in favor of complainant's contention" and that
after a case has already been" forwarded, raffled, and assigned to a
particular branch, the Public Prosecutor loses control over the case." The
order contains no evaluation of the parties' evidence for the purpose of
determining whether there was probable cause to proceed against petitioner. The
statement that the "weight of evidence . . . lean[s] heavily in favor of
complainant's [Jalandoni's] contention" is nothing but the statement of a
conclusion.
Nor could the MeTC rest its judgment solely on its authority
under the Mogul doctrine to have the last word on whether an in formation
should be withdrawn.
The question in this case is not so much whether the MeTC
has the authority to grant or not to grant the public prosecutor's motion to
withdraw the information it does but whether in the exercise of that discretion
or authority it acted justly and fairly. In this case, the MeTC did not
have good reason stated in its order for the reinstatement of the information
against petitioner, just as it did not have good reason for granting the
withdrawal of the information.
The matter should therefore be remanded to the MeTC so that it can make an independent evaluation of the evidence of
the prosecution and on that basis decide whether to grant or not to grant the
withdrawal of the information against petitioner.
X x x.”
Footnotes
10 Crespo v. Mogul, 151 SCRA 462, 471 (1987).
11 See Balayon Jr. v. Ocampo, 218 SCRA 13
(1993) citing Luzon Brokerage Corporation v. Court of Appeals,
176 SCRA 483 (1989).
12 Dee v. Court of Appeals, 238 SCRA 254 (1994); Martinez v.
Court of Appeals, supra.
13 237 SCRA at 585. Accord, Roberts v. Court of
Appeals, G.R. No. 113930, March 5, 1996.
