LUZ M. ZALDIVIA, PETITIONER, VS. HON. ANDRES B. REYES, JR., IN HIS CAPACITY AS ACTING PRESIDING JUDGE OF THE REGIONAL TRIAL COURT, FOURTH JUDICIAL REGION, BRANCH 76, SAN MATEO, …

The Court is asked to determine the applicable law specifying the
prescriptive period for violations of municipal ordinances.

The petitioner is charged with quarrying for commercial purposes
without a mayor’s permit in violation of Ordinance No. 2, Series of 1988, of
the Municipality of Rodriguez, in the Province of Rizal.

The offense was allegedly committed on May 11, 1990.^[1]
The referral-complaint of the police was received by the Office of the
Provincial Prosecutor of Rizal on May 30, 1990.^[2]
The corresponding information was filed with the Municipal Trial Court of
Rodriguez on October 2, 1990.^[3]

The petitioner moved to quash the information on the ground that
the crime had prescribed, but the motion was denied. On appeal to the Regional Trial Court of Rizal, the denial was
sustained by the respondent judge.^[4]

In the present petition for review on certiorari,
the petitioner first argues that the charge against her is governed by the
following provisions of the Rule on Summary Procedure:

Section 1. Scope. — This rule shall govern the procedure in
the Metropolitan Trial Courts, the Municipal Trial Courts, and the Municipal
Circuit Trial Courts in the following cases:

x x x

B. Criminal Cases:

1.               
Violations of traffic laws, rules and regulations;

2.               
Violations of rental law;

3.               
Violations of municipal or city ordinances;

4.               
All other criminal cases where the penalty prescribed by
law for the offense charged does not exceed six months imprisonment, or a fine
of one thousand pesos (P1,000.00), or both, irrespective of other imposable
penalties, accessory or otherwise, or of the civil liability arising therefrom. x x x” (Emphasis supplied.)

x x x

Section 9. How commenced. – The prosecution of criminal cases falling
within the scope of this Rule shall be either by complaint or by information
filed directly in court without need of a prior preliminary examination or
preliminary investigation: Provided,
however, That in Metropolitan Manila and chartered cities, such cases shall be
commenced only by information; Provided, further, That when the offense cannot
be prosecuted de oficio, the corresponding complaint shall be signed and
sworn to before the fiscal by the offended party.

She then invokes Act No. 3326, as amended, entitled “An Act
to Establish Periods of Prescription for Violations Penalized by Special Acts
and Municipal Ordinances and to Provide When Prescription Shall Begin to
Run,” reading as follows:

Section 1. Violations
penalized by special acts shall, unless otherwise provided in such acts,
prescribe in accordance with the following rules: x x x Violations penalized by municipal ordinances shall
prescribe after two months.

Section 2. Prescription
shall begin to run from the day of the commission of the violation of the law,
and if the same be not known at the time, from the discovery thereof and the
institution of judicial proceedings for its investigation and punishment.

The prescription shall be interrupted when proceedings are
instituted against the guilty person, and shall begin to run again if the
proceedings are dismissed for reasons not constituting jeopardy.

Section 3. For the
purposes of this Act, special acts shall be acts defining and penalizing
violations of law not included in the Penal Code.” (Emphasis supplied)

Her conclusion is that as the information was filed way beyond
the two-month statutory period from the date of the alleged commission of the
offense, the charge against her should have been dismissed on the ground of
prescription.

For its part, the prosecution contends that the prescriptive
period was suspended upon the filing of the complaint against her with the
Office of the Provincial Prosecutor. Agreeing with the respondent judge, the Solicitor General also invokes
Section 1, Rule 110 of the 1985 Rules on Criminal Procedure, providing as
follows:

Section 1. How Instituted –
For offenses not subject to the rule on summary procedure in special cases,
the institution of criminal action shall be as follows:

a)         For offenses falling under the
jurisdiction of the Regional Trial Court, by filing the complaint with the
appropriate officer for the purpose of conducting the requisite preliminary
investigation therein;

b)              
For offenses falling under the jurisdiction of the Municipal
Trial Courts and Municipal Circuit Trial Courts, by filing the complaint
directly with the said courts, or a complaint with the fiscals office. However, in Metropolitan Manila and other
chartered cities, the complaint may be filed only with the office of the
fiscal.

In all cases such institution interrupts the period of
prescription of the offense charged. (Emphasis supplied.)

Emphasis is laid on the last paragraph. The respondent maintains that the filing of the complaint with
the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor comes under the phrase “such
institution” and that the phrase “in all cases” applies to all
cases, without distinction, including those falling under the Rule on Summary
Procedure.

The said paragraph, according to the respondent, was an adoption
of the following dictum in Francisco v. Court of Appeals:^[5]

In view of this diversity of precedents, and in order to provide
guidance for Bench and Bar, this Court has re-examined the question and, after
mature consideration, has arrived at the conclusion that the true doctrine is,
and should be, the one established by the decisions holding that the filing of
the complaint in the Municipal Court, even if it be merely for purposes of
preliminary examination or investigation, should, and does, interrupt the
period of prescription of the criminal responsibility, even if the court where
the complaint or information is filed can not try the case on its merits. Several reasons buttress this
conclusion: first, the text of Article
91 of the Revised Penal Code, in declaring that the period of prescription
“shall be interrupted by the filing of the complaint or information”
without distinguishing whether the complaint is filed in the court for
preliminary examination or investigation merely, or for action on the merits. Second, even if the court where the
complaint or information is filed may only proceed to investigate the case, its
actuations already represent the initial step of the proceedings against the
offender. Third, it is unjust to
deprive the injured party of the right to obtain vindication on account of
delays that are not under his control. All that the victim of the offense may do on his part to initiate the
prosecution is to file the requisite complaint.

It is important to note that this decision was promulgated on May
30, 1983, two months before the promulgation of the Rule on Summary Procedure
on August 1, 1983. On the other hand,
Section 1 of Rule 110 is new, having been incorporated therein with the
revision of the Rules on Criminal Procedure on January 1, 1985, except for the
last paragraph, which was added on October 1, 1988.

That section meaningfully begins with the phrase, “for
offenses not subject to the rule on summary procedure in special cases,”
which plainly signifies that the section does not apply to offenses which are subject
to summary procedure. The phrase
“in all cases” appearing in the last paragraph obviously refers to
the cases covered by the Section, that is, those offenses not governed by the
Rule on Summary Procedure. This
interpretation conforms to the canon that words in a statute should be read in
relation to and not isolation from the rest of the measure, to discover the
true legislative intent.

As it is clearly provided in the Rule on Summary Procedure that
among the offenses it covers are violations of municipal or city ordinances, it
should follow that the charge against the petitioner, which is for violation of
a municipal ordinance of Rodriguez, is governed by that rule and not Section 1
of Rule 110.

Where paragraph (b) of the section does speak of “offenses
falling under the jurisdiction of the Municipal Trial Courts and Municipal
Circuit Trial Courts,” the obvious reference is to Section 32(2) of B.P.
No. 129, vesting in such courts:

(2) Exclusive original jurisdiction over all offenses punishable
with imprisonment of not exceeding four years and two months, or a fine of not
more than four thousand pesos, or both such fine and imprisonment, regardless
of other imposable accessory or other penalties, including the civil liability
arising from such offenses or predicated thereon, irrespective of kind, nature,
value, or amount thereof; Provided, however, That in offenses involving damage
to property through criminal negligence they shall have exclusive original
jurisdiction where the imposable fine does not exceed twenty thousand pesos.

These offenses are not covered by the Rule on Summary Procedure.

Under Section 9 of the Rule on Summary Procedure, “the
complaint or information shall be filed directly in court without need of a
prior preliminary examination or preliminary investigation.”^[6]
Both parties agree that this provision does not prevent the prosecutor from
conducting a preliminary investigation if he wants to. However, the case shall be deemed commenced
only when it is filed in court, whether or not the prosecution decides to
conduct a preliminary investigation. This means that the running of the prescriptive period shall be halted
on the date the case is actually filed in court and not on any date before that.

This interpretation is in consonance with the afore-quoted Act
No. 3326 which says that the period of prescription shall be suspended
“when proceedings are instituted against the guilty party.” The
proceedings referred to in Section 2 thereof are “judicial
proceedings,” contrary to the submission of the Solicitor General that
they include administrative proceedings. His contention is that we must not distinguish as the law does not
distinguish. As a matter of fact, it
does.

At any rate, the Court feels that if there be a conflict between
the Rule on Summary Procedure and Section 1 of Rule 110 of the Rules on
Criminal Procedure, the former should prevail as the special law. And if there be a conflict between Act No.
3326 and Rule 110 of the Rules on Criminal Procedure, the latter must again yield
because this Court, in the exercise of its rule-making power, is not allowed to
“diminish, increase or modify substantive rights” under Article VIII,
Section 5(5) of the Constitution. Prescription in criminal cases is a substantive right.^[7]

Going back to the Francisco case, we find it not irrelevant to
observe that the decision would have been conformable to Section 1, Rule 110,
as the offense involved was grave oral defamation punishable under the Revised
Penal Code with arresto mayor in its maximum period to prision
correccional in its minimum period. By contrast, the prosecution in the instant case is for violation of a
municipal ordinance, for which the penalty cannot exceed six months,^[8]
and is thus covered by the Rule on Summary Procedure.

The Court realizes that under the above interpretation, a crime
may prescribe even if the complaint is filed seasonably with the prosecutor’s
office if, intentionally or not, he delays the institution of the necessary
judicial proceedings until its too late. However, that possibility should not justify a misreading of the
applicable rules beyond their obvious intent as reasonably deduced from their
plain language. The remedy is not a
distortion of the meaning of the rules but a rewording thereof to prevent the problem
here sought to be corrected.

Our conclusion is that the prescriptive period for the crime
imputed to the petitioner commenced from its alleged commission on May 11,
1990, and ended two months thereafter, on July 11, 1990, in accordance with
Section 1 of Act No. 3326. It was not
interrupted by the filing of the complaint with the Office of the Provincial
Prosecutor on May 30, 1990, as this was not a judicial proceeding. The judicial proceeding that could have
interrupted the period was the filing of the information with the Municipal
Trial Court of Rodriguez, but this was done only on October 2, 1990, after the
crime had already prescribed.

WHEREFORE, the petition is GRANTED, and the challenged
Order dated October 2, 1991 is SET ASIDE. Criminal Case No. 90-089 in the Municipal Trial Court of Rodriguez,
Rizal, is hereby DISMISSED on the ground of prescription. It is so ordered.

Narvasa, C.J., Gutierrez, Jr., Paras, Feliciano, Padilla,
Bidin, Griño-Aquino, Medialdea, Regalado, Davide, Jr., Romero, Nocon, and Bellosillo, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Rollo, p. 18.

^[2]
Ibid.

^[3]
Id., p. 19; Through Judge Andres B. Reyes, Jr.

^[4]
id., p. 21.

^[5]
122 SCRA 538.

^[6]
The phrase “filed directly in court without need of prior preliminary
examination or preliminary investigation” was deleted under the Revised
Rule on Summary Procedure effective on November 15, 1991.

^[7]
People vs. Castro, 95 Phil. 463.

^[8]
Section 447, Local Government Code.