EDUARDO SOTTO, PETITIONER AND APPELLANT VS. THE DIRECTOR OF PRISONS, THE SUPERINTENDENT, SAN RAMON PRISON AND PENAL FARM, ZAMBOANGA CITY, RESPONDENTS AND APPELLEES.

Together with Rocindo Brillantes, Eligio Iturralde and Alfredo
Valencia, petitioner Eduardo Sotto was convicted upon a plea of guilty,
by the CFI of Zamboanga, for the crime of robbery, and sentenced to
serve an imprisonment of from 12 years and 1 day to 18 years, 2 months
and 21 days of reclusion temporal; to return the articles
robbed or pay the corresponding value of P465.60 to the offended party
Leona Kuan Tan, with the accessories of the law and to pay 1/4 of the
costs (CFI-Crim. Case No. 1873, Zamboanga City). He started serving his
sentence on December 17, 1953, and up to the date of his petition for
habeas corpus, filed on December 8, 1958, he has already served an
aggregate term of 4 years, 11 months and 21 days, excluding good
conduct time allowance, earned under article 97 of the Revised Penal
Code. He alleged in his petition that the penalty imposed is excessive
and not in accordance with law, as the proper penalty imposable, for
the offense charged in the information should be that of Article 302,
and not article 299 of the Revised Penal Code; that at the time of
conviction, petitioner was a minor, 16 years old, and as such he was
entitled to a penalty next lower than the one prescribed for the crime
committed, to wit, arresto mayor in its maximum period to prision correcional
in its minimum period, or from 4 months and 1 day to 2 years and 4
months, and that having served sentence for a period of 4 years, 11
months and 21 days, he should already be ordered released from custody
and control of the Respondent Director of Prisons or his representative
and that he has no other adequate, legal and speedy remedy in law
except the present proceeding. He, therefore, prayed that the
respondent be ordered to release him. Respondent, answering, alleged in
his special defense that admitting, but not granting that the sentence
is not in accordance with law, the petition for habeas corpus, is not
the proper remedy.

The trial court issued an Order the dispositive portion of which runs—

“The petitioner is seeking relief from that error.
This Court believes that the trial Judge Hon. Pablo Villalobos who
imposed the sentence in criminal case No. 1873, was right; and
therefore, this case of habeas corpus will not lie and same is here
denied”.

Petitioner appealed, assigning as error of the trial court in not
holding that the penalty imposed upon the accused was excessive and
contrary to law. Considering that the issues involved are purely of
law, the Court of Appeals certified the case to Us for determination.
The Solicitor General has not filed any brief.

At the bottom of the petition, the petitioner desires to revise
errors of law or fact, if ever there were such errors, which the trial
court had supposedly incurred in the criminal case aforementioned. It
is already a settled rule that when a court has jurisdiction of the
offense charged and the person of the accused, its judgment, order or
decree is valid and is not subject to collateral attack by habeas
corpus, for this cannot be made to perform the function of a writ of
error, and this holds true even if the judgment, order or decree was
erroneous (Vda. de Talavera vs. Supt. etc. 67 Phil. 538; Cruz vs.
Martin, et al.. 75 Phil. 11). In a recent case, (Cuenca vs.
Superintendent, etc. L-17400, Dec. 10, 1961), this Court said—

“* * * This Court has repeatedly held that a writ of
habeas corpus is not a writ of error, or a writ for the purpose of
review (Felipe vs. Director of Prisons, 27 Phil. 378; Pomeroy vs.
Director of Prisons, 107 Phil. 50 ^[1]. In the Pomeroy case, we stated that—

‘With
reference to persons in custody pursuant to a final judgment, the rule
is that the writ of habeas corpus can issue only for want of
jurisdiction of the sentencing court, and cannot function as a writ of
error. Hence, the writ will not lie to correct mere mistake of fact or
of law which do not nullify the proceedings taken by a court in the
exercise of its functions, if the court has jurisdiction over the crime
and over the person of the defendant.’

“* * * The second
error, on the other hand, attacks the Municipal Court’s appreciation of
the number of appellant’s previous convictions for theft. Again, this
is merely an error of judgment by said court, which did not in any way
affect its jurisdiction, or could nullify its proceedings, but was
correctable only by a seasonal appeal.

In the Felipe case, supra, we pointed out:

‘But the writ of habeas corpus is not a remedy
provided for the correction of such errors. Courts cannot, in habeas
corpus proceedings, review the record in a criminal case after a
judgment of conviction has been rendered, and the defendants have
entered on the execution of the sentence imposed), to ascertain whether
the facts found by the trial court were in accordance with the evidence
disclosed by the record, or in order to pass upon the correctness of
the conclusions of law by the trial court based on the facts thus
found. Under the statute, a commitment in due form based on a final
judgment convicting and sentencing a defendant in a criminal case is
conclusive of the legality of his detention under such commitment,
unless it appears that the court exceeded its jurisdiction in imposing
the penalty. Mere errors of law or of fact, which did not have the
effect of depriving the trial court of its jurisdiction over the cause
and the person of the defendant, if corrected at all, must be corrected
on appeal in the form and manner prescribed by law.’

Reliance
is placed on our ruling in the cases of Cruz vs. Director” of Prisons
(17 Phil. 269) and Caluag vs. Pecson, (82 Phil. 8), but these cases are
not in point, for they involved penalties not provided by law and,
therefore, beyond the power or jurisdiction of the trial court to
impose. Thus, in the Pomeroy case, supra, we said:

‘While
this Court has ruled that an excessive sentence or penalty imposed by
final judgment may be corrected by habeas corpus, the cases where such
ruling was applied involved penalties that could not be imposed under
any circumstances for the crime for which the prisoner was convicted:
(subsidiary imprisonment for violation of special acts, in Cruz vs.
Director of Prisons, 17 Phil. 269; imprisonment for contempt by refusal
to execute a conveyance instead of having the conveyance executed as
provided by Sec. 10 of Rule 39, in Caluag vs. Pecson, 82 Phil. 8). * *
*.’

In the case at bar, the trial court undoubtedly had jurisdiction
over the cause, over the person of the accused, and to impose the
penalty provided for by law. What is here questioned is only the
correctness of the exercise of that jurisdiction. The mistake committed
by the trial court, if any, refers to the appreciation of the facts
and/or in the appreciation of the law, which, in the light of the
authorities heretofore cited, can not be corrected by habeas corpus.

The writ is denied, and the decision appealed from is affirmed. No costs.

Padilla, Bautista Angelo, Concepcion, Reyes, J. B. L., Barrera, and Dizon, JJ., concur.

^[1] See also Talabon vs.
Prov. Warden, 78 Phil. 599; Perkins vs. Dir. of Prisons, 58 Phil. 271:
Paguntalan vs. Dir. of Prisons, 57 Phil. 140; Trono Felipe vs. Dir. of
Prisons, 25 Phil. 121; U.S. vs. Jayme, 24 Phil. 90; McMicking vs.
Schields, 49 Phil. 971.