FRANCISCO C. DE LA RAMA, PETITIONER, VS. THE PEOPLE’S COURT, RESPONDENT.

FERIA, J.:

This is a second petition for certiorari filed by the
petitioner with this Court against the People’s Court alleging that the latter
has acted with grave abuse of discretion in denying his petition for bail based
on the ground of ill health.

The first petition was remanded by this Court to the People’s Court for
further action, because after the filing thereof the petitioner had filed a
supplementary petition, in which were alleged new facts occurring during the
pendency of the ease before this Court, accompanied by two medical certificates
of Drs. Guerrero and Legaspi, which had not and could not have been taken into
consideration by the People’s Court in denying the petitioner’s petition for
bail. This Court, in disposing of the first petition for certiorari
held the following:

“Considering that, according to the modern trend of court’s decisions, unless
allowance of bail is forbidden by law in the particular case, the illness of the
prisoner, independently of the merits of the case, is a circumstance, and the
humanity of the law makes it a consideration which should, regardless of the
charge and the stage of the proceeding, influence the court to exercise its
discretion to admit the prisoner to bail; taking into consideration also that
the petition for certiorari filed with this court in the present case is based
on the ground that the court has abused its discretion in not granting bail to
petitioner on the strength of the evidence submitted to the People’s Court
showing the physical condition of the petitioner; and considering further that
this court, in deciding the petition, can not take into consideration the new
development of the petitioner’s physical condition which has supervened during
the pendency of this case in this court, and is alleged in the supplemental
petition, although respondent has not objected to the admission of such
supplementary petition, because the question for this court to determine is
whether or not the People’s Court, in view of the facts submitted to it for
decision has abused its discretion in denying petitioner’s application for bail:
it is hereby resolved to remand this case to the People’s Court for further
proceeding, in order that the Office of Special Prosecutor may have the
opportunity to rebut and refute the evidence showing the new facts in favor or
the petitioner and cross-examine the expert witnesses for the latter, and the
People’s Court may properly decide the case.”

Before the hearing of the case by the People’s Court pursuant to the above
quoted resolution, the attorney for the petitioner filed a motion asking that
the petitioner be allowed to be confined and treated in the meantime in a
hospital to be designated by said court, out of the new Bilibid Prison. At the
hearing of said motion the special prosecutor opposed to it on the ground that
the motion for hospitalization outside of the Bilibid prison is in effect an
attempt to obtain by indirection what the accused has failed to obtain directly,
i. e., his provisional release. Acting upon the motion, the People’s
Court ordered the temporary confinement of the petitioner in Quezon Institute,
with the instruction that the Medical Director thereof make a diagnosis of the
illness of the petitioner and far submit every fifteen days a report under oath
on the latter’s ailment; and also ordered Dr. Paulino I. Garcia, Roentgenologist
of Saint Luke’s Hospital to make a radiographic examination of the petitioner’s
lungs. After the petitioner had been confined for fifteen days, the Medical
Director of the Quezon Institute submitted a report to the People’s Court in
which he states that the petitioner is actually suffering from “minimal, early,
unstable type of pulmonary tuberculosis, and chronic granular pharyngitis,” and
that they “have seen many similar cases later progressing into advanced stages
when treatment and medicine are no longer of any avail;” and recommended that be
“continue his stay in the sanatorium for purposes of proper management,
treatment and regular periodic radiographic check-up.”

In view of the report of the Medical Director of the Quezon Institute, the
petitioner filed with the People’s Court a motion dated August 20, 1946,
reiterating his petition for ball, basing his petition on said report, and that
it is necessary for him to be released on bail in order that he may be confined
in his own house and treated by an especialist on tuberculosis, since he could
not afford to pay the expenses which his stay in the Quezon Institute would
entail. The special prosecutor objected to the motion on the ground that the
petitioner might continue in the Quezon Institute with less than his actual
expenses; that if his financial resources were not sufficient he may stay in the
charity ward of said institute or hospital; that “he could very well fee
returned to Muntinglupa’s hospital, where he would be properly taken care of
without any expense on his part, especially now that the condition of his lungs
has already been ascertained by the examinations conducted by Dr. Miguel
Cañizares, Medical Director of the Quezon Institute, and Dr. Paulino, I. Garcia,
Roentgenologist of St. Luke’s Hospital.” And the People’s Court, in its order of
August 30, 1946, denied the petitioner’s petition for bail and ordered, in
accordance with the recommendation of the Medical Director of the Quezon
Institute, that the defendant be confined in said institute for purposes of
proper management, treatment, and regular periodic radiographic check up of his
illness, and that the said medical director should present a monthly report,
under oath, on the health and physical condition of the petitioner.

Against this order present petition was filed by the petitioner.

The fact that the denial by the People’s Court of the petition for bail is
accompanied by the above quoted order of confinement of the petitioner in the
Quezon Institute for treatment without the letter’s consent, does not in any way
modify or qualify the denial so as to meet or accomplish the humanitarian
purpose or reason underlying the doctrine adopted by modern trend of courts
decision which permit bail to prisoners, irrespective of the nature and merits
of the charge against them, if their continuous confinement during the pendency
of their case would be injurious to their health or endanger their life.

The question for this Court to determine in the present ease is, therefore,
whether or not the People’s Court has acted with grave abuse of discretion in
denying the petitioner’s petition for bail.

Considering the report of the Medical Director of the Quezon Institute to the
effect that the petitioner “is actually suffering from minimal, early, unstable
type of pulmonary tuberculosis, and chronic, granular pharyngitis,” and that in
said institute they “have seen many similar cases, later progressing into
advance stages when treatment and medicine are no longer of any avail;” taking
into consideration that the petitioner’s previous petition for bail was denied
by the People’s Court on the ground that the petitioner was suffering from
quieseent and not active tuberculosis, and the implied purpose of the People’s
Court in sending the petitioner to the Quezon Institute for clinical examination
and diagnosis of the actual condition of his lungs,was evidently to verify
whether the petitioner is suffering from active tuberculosis, in order to act
accordingly in deciding his petition for bail; and considering further that the
said People’s Court has adopted and applied the well-established doctrine cited
in our above quoted resolution, in several cases, among them, the cases against
Pio Duran (case No. 3324) and Benigno Aquino (case No. 3527), in which the said
defendants were released on bail on the ground that they were ill and their
continued confinement in New Bilibid prison would be injurious to their health
or endanger their life; it is evident and we consequently hold that the People’s
Court acted with grave abuse of discretion in refusing to release the petitioner
on bail.

Therefore, the order of the People’s Court denying the petition for bail is
set aside, and said court is hereby ordered to render within a reasonable’time a
new decision in conformity with the said doctrine applied by the same court in
the cases above mentioned. So ordered.

Pablo, Hilado, JJ., and
Dela Rosa, Santos, Angeles, Ramos, Benitez, Yatco, and Sanchez,
Acting JJ., concur.

DISSENTING

PERFECTO, J.:

Several months ago, that is, on January 25, 1946, petitioner came to us for
the first time, complaining against the action of the People’s Court in denying
his petition for bail.

The majority resolved, on June 24, 1946, to remand the case to the People’s
Court for further proceeding in order that it “may properly decide the case,”
because they undoubtedly found the petition not unmeritorious. It was out lot to
be in disagreement with the majority, because we believed that petitioner had
since then shown that he is entitled to be released on bail, and we expounded
the reasons of our position in a written opinion.

For the second time, petitioner comes to us for legal relief against a second
denial of his petition for bail, based on his ill health, alleging that the
People’s Court, in issuing the denial, acted with grave abuse of discretion and
even with unfair discrimination, because in other two cases, upon the same
ground of ill health, it ordered the release on bail of accused Pio Duran and
Benigno Aquino,

It may not be amiss to recall the fact that many months ago, that is, on
November 16, 1945, the petition for certiorari of Pio Duran against the People’s
Court, which denied his first petition for bail, was denied and dismissed with
our lone dissenting vote, because we were of opinion that he was since then
entitled to be released on bail.

On the second petition under our consideration, the majority arrived at the
conclusion that “the People’s Court acted with grave abuse of discretion in
refusing to release the petitioner on bail.”

Upon this conclusion, it seems self-evident that petitioner is naturally
entitled, as an immediate relief, to be released on bail, but to our surprise
the majority rendered a decision with the following dispositive provision:

“Therefore, the order of the People’s Court denying the petition for bail is
set aside, and said court is hereby ordered to render within a reasonable time a
new decision in conformity with the said doctrine applied by the same court in
the cases above mentioned.”

We feel constrained to dissent from what we consider a flagrant
inconsistency.

If the lower court acted with grave abuse of discretion “in refusing to
release the petitioner on bail,” that means in plain language that petitioner is
entitled to be released on bail, and the logical remedy against the “grave abuse
of discretion” is to order the granting of that which, with “grave abuse of
discretion,” was denied. But the majority not only failed to order the
petitioner’s release on bail, or to order the People’s Court to grant the
release of petitioner on bail, but they limited themselves to ordering the
People’s Court to render “a new decision,” not immediately-notwithstanding the
fact that the petitioner has for many months been unjustly deprived of his
personal freedom, the deprivation being in utter violation of elemental
humanitarian principles-but “within a reasonable time,” which is elastic
enough.

If we remember the well-known case of Teehankee, which had been seesawing in
an unjustifiable commutation between the Supreme Court and the People’s Court,
it is to be inferred that this second remanding of the case of petitioner De la
Rama to the People’s Court may be judged as an unimproved second edition of a
procedure welshing the hopes of those who come to us for relief against errors
and abuses of inferior courts.

It must be resnembered that in the Teehankee case, the Supreme Court was
finally constrained to direct the release of petitioner on bail, without
entrusting that function to the People’s Court. In view of the circumstances of
the present case, why do we not follow the same procedure? What is the reason
for compelling petitioner to endure more delay in enjoying the liberty to which
he is entitled? Why burden with procedural complexities the gianting of a simple
remedy? Those who view the administration of Justice, not as a means to an end,
but as an end in itself, in which a set of rigid legal formulas and ironbound
technicalities are deified as terrible fetishes superior even to the sanctity of
substantial and fundamental rights of the litigants, and sacrificing in the
altar of their artificial inviolability those sacred rights, if necessary, to be
crushed like the limbs and bones of victims enduring torture in a rack, might
find some justification for the inconsistency we are pointing out; but to the
common sense of the man of the street, it can not fail to produce lethal
anoxia.

We are of opinion that the petitioner should be released on bail without any
delay.