PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PETITIONER, VS. HON. MARIANO CASTAÑEDA, JUDGE OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE OF PAMPANGA (BR. III), AND GERONIMO KABIGTING, RESPONDENTS.

These appellate proceedings concern the president of a religious
organization (a parish council) who, over several years, admittedly solicited
and received funds for the construction of the parish church in his
neighborhood, without first securing a permit to do so from the Director of
Public Welfare (now Director of field Services, Department of Social Welfare)
as required by Act No. 4075.^[1]
That act declares any violation of its provisions to be punishable “by
imprisonment for not more than six months or by a fine of not more than two
hundred pesos (P200.00) in the discretion of the court.”^[2]
And offenses so punished prescribe in four (4) years.^[3]

It is admitted that the respondent, Geronimo Kabigting,
as president of the Parish Council of Sto. Tomas, Pampanga, had been soliciting and collecting contributions
for the period from July 4, 1971
to April, 1973 for the construction of the Sto. Tomas
Parish church; and that as of April 11, 1973, he had received donations from
different persons and companies amounting to P10,363.80;
and that neither he nor the Sto. Tomas Parish Council
had secured any permit to so solicit and collect contributions in accordance
with Act No. 4075.

Upon these facts, Kabigting was charged
with a violation of said Act No. 4075 in the Municipal Court of Sto. Tomas on August
23, 1976.  The case was
docketed as Criminal Case No. 796.  Kabigting moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that
the crime charged had already prescribed, considering that since July 4, 1971­ — when he began soliciting
contributions — ­to August 23, 1976 — when the complaint was presented —
more than four (4) years had elapsed.^[4]
His motion was denied by the Municipal Court as was also, his motion for
reconsideration of the order of denial.^[5]

Kabigting went to the Court of First
Instance of Pampanga and prayed for the issuance of
the writ of certiorari to
annul the adverse orders of the Municipal Court of Sto.
Tomas.^[6]
After due proceedings, that Court rendered a decision on September 27, 1977,
granting the writ as prayed for and directing the dismissal by the Municipal
Court of Criminal Case No. 796 against Kabigting on
the ground that the offense charged had already prescribed.^[7]
It is this decision which the People has appealed to this Court, principally
upon the legal issue of whether or not, under the undisputed facts, the offense
imputed to Kabigting is indeed time-barred.

It is the People’s contention that every act of solicitation of
donations without the permit required by Act No. 4075 constitutes a complete and
separate offense; that therefore, solicitations made within four (4) years
prior to the filing of the complaint on August 21, 1976 — specifically the
solicitations in the latter part of 1972 and in 1973, mentioned in the
complaint filed against Kabigting in the Municipal
Court — could not be considered as barred by prescription.  Each act of solicitation, according to the
People, is a complete offense in itself and could not be deemed a product of
one consolidated or single criminal resolution, for the gist of the crime is
the solicitation or collection of contributions without a permit.  It argues that it is absurd to consider the
many acts of solicitation without a permit as only one offense, since this would mean that future
solicitations without permit would be deemed prescribed even before their
commission, and Kabigting could continue indefinitely
collecting contributions without permit without fear of prosecution, after the
lapse of four (4) years from the first collection (July 4, 1971).  And even assuming the contrary, the People
submit that the prescriptive period should be reckoned only from August 18,
1976, when the lack of permit was admitted by Kabigting
during the preliminary investigation, conformably with Section 2, Act 3326, as
amended, providing that prescription begins to run from the day of the
commission of the offense, but “if the same be not known at the time, from
the discovery thereof and the institution of judicial proceedings for its
investigation and punishment.”

It is Kabigting’s theory, on the other
hand, that what the law means to punish is the failure to secure a permit prior
to soliciting contributions or donations; and since the first solicitation
without permit was made on July 4, 1971, the crime was extinguished by prescription
four (4) years thereafter, or on July
3, 1975, slightly more than a year before the filing of the complaint against
him on August 21, 1976.

Clearly, the crime is made up of two (2) essential elements:  (a) soliciting or receiving contributions for
charitable or public welfare purposes, (b) the omission to secure a permit to
do so from the Director of Public Welfare (now Director of Field Services,
Department of Social Welfare), prior to soliciting or
receiving contributions.  Any person
intending to make such solicitations is required to first secure a permit to do
so; without that permit, he commits a crime if he solicits or receives
contributions; but obviously, if he makes no solicitation or receives no
contributions, he commits no crime even if he obtains no permit.  The permit, once obtained, authorizes a
person to solicit and receive contributions for charitable or public welfare
purposes, whether from one or a thousand donors; and since plainly, the motive
for the obtention of such a permit is invariably, not
to say always, to solicit not from one donor only, or two or three, but from as
many as may be approached and importuned, it seems logical to assume that it
was not the intendment of the statute to make punishable every single act of
solicitation without permit as individual, separate crimes, a proposition
enhanced by the fact that the infringement of the statute is treated as a mere
misdemeanor or light offense, and by the familiar principle that criminal laws
should be construed in favor of the accused.

Hence, solicitations or acceptance of donations for charitable or
public welfare purposes over a period of time, without the requisite permit to
do so, are to be deemed one offense only regardless of the number of such acts
of solicitation or acceptance of contributions. 
In this sense, the offense is a continuing one perpetrated over a span
of time.  The period of its prescription
shall therefore be computed from the latest act of solicitation or acceptance
of contributions, and not from the first.

In an analogous case,^[8]
also involving breach of a special law –prohibiting the collection of
attorneys’ fees in respect of claims of dependents of a deceased veteran, in
excess of the maximum prescribed by the law — and substantially upon the same
precepts just discussed, the several, periodical acts of a lawyer of
collecting fees in excess of the statutory maximum were held to constitute one
single, continuing offense, which may not be properly divided into different
segments, each segment subject to prescription independently of the others.

The challenged decision
is therefore incorrect in adjudging the period of prescription to have
been completed in Kabigting’s favor and on that basis
directing the dismissal of the criminal prosecution against him.

WHEREFORE, the Decision rendered on September 27, 1977 in
Criminal Case No. 5020 of the then Court of First Instance (now Regional Trial
Court) of Pampanga, subject of this appeal, is
REVERSED AND SET ASIDE, and the Orders of the Municipal Court (now Municipal
Trial Court) of Sto. Tomas, Pampanga,
in Criminal Case No. 796, dated February
1, 1977 and March 9, 1977,
are REINSTATED and hereby AFFIRMED.  Costs against private respondent.

Cruz, Gancayco, Griño-Aquino, and Medialdea, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Sec. 1

^[2]
Sec. 3

^[3]
Act 3376, as amended which provides that offenses under special laws punished
by imprisonment of more than one month but less than two years prescribe in
four (4) years

^[4]
Rollo, pp. 41-43

^[5]
Id., pp. 49-50, 53

^[6]
The case was docketed as Civil Case No. 5020 and assigned to the sala (Br. III) of respondent Judge, Hon. Mariano Castaneda, Jr.

^[7]
Rollo, p.111

^[8]
Peo v. Sabbun, 10
SCRA 156 (1964)