G.R. No. 13990. September 24, 1918
THE UNITED STATES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. VICENTE SOTTO, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.
FISHER, J.:
which the appellant, Vicente Sotto, was found guilty of the crime of libel and
sentenced to pay a fine of P600.
The information upon which this prosecution was based is as follows:
“That during the period from the 1st day of May, 1915, to the 22d of the said
month and year, in the city of-Manila, Philippine Islands, within the
jurisdiction of this Court, the said defendant, Vicente Sotto, being the
director, editor, manager, and printer of the weekly paper known as ‘The
Independent,’ edited and published in English and Spanish in the city of Manila,
with the intention of attacking the honesty, virtue and reputation of Lope K.
Santos, Jose Turiano Santiago and Hermenegildo Cruz, the principal leaders of
the association known as the ‘Congreso Obrero de Filipinas,’ and with the
malicious intention of exposing the said Lope K. Santos, Jose Turiano Santiago
and Hermenegildo Cruz to public hatred, contempt and ridicule as private
citizens and as the leaders of the said association, voluntarily, illegally,
criminally and maliciously published and caused to be published of the three
persons above named a certain false, injurious and malicious defamation and
libel tending to attack the “honesty, virtue and reputation of the same, on page
23 of issue No. 4 of the said weekly paper, dated May 1, 1915, which said
publication is as follows:
” ‘WITHOUT MALICE ….
” ‘Having become tired of seeing the workingmen at the mercy of parasites
who, under the guise of a false sympathy for the laboring classes, exploit the
proletariat, making the latter tile plaything of their ambitions and
machiavelian manipulations; weary of these self-styled labor leaders
who are pointed out by the people as the ones responsible for the malversation
of workingmen’s funds, the bankruptcy of the “Tagumpay,” the “Katubusan
scandals,” the disappearance of a promissory note from the office of attorney
Diokno, the misappropriation of funds in the management of the “El Ideal.” The
combinations which resulted in the failure of the seamen and street-car
employees’ strikes, and other numerous blunders committed by the said labor
leaders, all of which has left the proletariat in the situation of a victim
plucked by the very ones who set themselves up as their defenders; and,
realizing that our cause is in danger, now, for the sake of our honor, and for
.dignity of the laboring classes, we believe that the time has come to speak
plainly and to put an end for once and all to so many parasites.
‘If all these charges are true, it is hard to understand why the workingmen
have continued until now under the control of their present leaders.
” ‘Who is to blame?
” ‘Victi.’
“which said libelous publication was amplified by a cartoon published on page
1 of issue No. 7 of the said weekly paper ‘The Independent,’ on the 22d of May,
1915, which was also published at the place and on the date above-mentioned.
which said cartoon, in which among others, there appear the caricatures of the
aforesaid parties is made an integral part of this information as Exhibit A;
that the said defendant on the aforesaid date and place intended to accuse, as
in fact he did accuse, Lope K. Santos, of being responsible for certain scandals
which occurred in the cigar and cigarette factory ‘Katubusan’ and for the
disappearance of a promissory note from the office of attorney Ramon Diokno and
of being indebted to the firm of E. C. McCullough & Co. and to the printer
I. Morales, both of this city of Manila; accusing also Jose Turiano Santiago,
one of the organizers of the seamen and street-car employees’ strikes, of being
responsible for certain combinations and insinuating that he had received the
sum of P2,000 to bring about the failure of the said strikes; and accusing also
Hermenegildo Cruz of being responsible for the bankruptcy of the printing
establishment ‘Tagumpay,’ of certain scandals in the aforesaid factory
‘Katubusan,’ and of the misappropriation of funds in the administration of the
newspaper ‘El Ideal;’ and accusing all of the said three parties of the
malversation of workingmen’s funds; and that the said malicious defamation was
published and circulated at the said time and place by the defendant in the
manner above set forth with the intention of attacking the honesty, virtue and
reputation of the said Lope K. Santos, Jose” Turiano Santiago and Hermenegildo
Cruz, thereby exposing them to public hatred, contempt and ridicule.
“All contrary to the law in such cases made and provided.”
The defendant demurred to this information upon the ground of duplicity. The
trial court sustained the demurrer, and from that ruling an appeal was taken to
this court on behalf of the government. Justice Moreland, writing the opinion of
the court upon the questions presented by that appeal (U. S. vs. Sotto,
36 Phil. Rep., 389), said:
“It is contended that each publication set out in the information is libelous
in itself and, therefore, constitutes a crime; and, as a necessary result, that
two crimes are charged in the information. We do not believe this contention is
sound. The only purpose of including in the information the second publications
was to complete the publication. The first publication mentions no names. It
speaks of labor leaders in general but of no one in particular. It employs,
however certain words and phrases such as ‘the bankruptcy of the Tagumpay,’ ‘the
Katubusan scandals,’ ‘the disappearance of a promissory note from the office of
Attorney Diokno,’ ‘the misappropriation of funds in the management of El Ideal,’
and ‘the combinations which resulted in the failure of the seamen and street-car
employees’ strikes. The second publication consists of a cartoon in which the
persons referred to in the first publication are caricatured by name and to each
one of them is attached one of the words or phrases just mentioned, thereby
identifying him as one of the persons meant in the first publication. In the
first publication, as we have seen, the labor leaders referred to are charged
with having caused ‘the bankruptcy of the Tagumpay.’ In the cartoon we have the
picture of a man labeled ‘H. Cruz’ carrying a banner which bears among others,
the word ‘Tagumpay.’ The first publication also mentions ‘the Katubusan
scandal.’ In the cartoon the word ‘Katubusan’ is found inscribed on a banner
carried by H. Cruz and also upon one carried by a person labeled ‘L. K. Santos.’
In the first publication we have also the charge that the labor leaders therein
referred to were responsible for ‘the disappearance of a promissory note from
the office of Attorney Diokno.’ The word ‘Diokno’ appears in the cartoon upon
the banner carried by ‘L. K. Santos.’ On the banner carried by H. Cruz are the
words ‘El Ideal’ to which reference is found in the first publication where the
labor leaders are charged with responsibility for the disappearance of funds
belonging to ‘El Ideal.’ A person named ‘J. Turiano’ is seated at a table with a
dish before him labeled ‘Labor Congress’ which he is engaged in eating. He also
holds in his hand a banner carrying the devices ‘seamen strike and street-car
employees strike.’ The banner borne by L. K. Santos carried in addition to the
words ‘Katubusan’ and ‘Diokno’ the words ‘McCullough’ and ‘Morales.’ From the
mouths of the three figures thus depicted in the cartoon, H. Cruz, J. Turiano
and L. K. Santos, issue the words respectively ‘I am the first leader,’ ‘And I
am the second,’ and ‘And I am the third.’
“The evident purpose and result of the publication of the cartoon, called the
second publication, was to make clear to the public that the three men named in
the cartoon were the labor leaders referred to in the first publication. The
effect of the cartoon was to give form and substance to the insinuations and
references made in the first publication and the persons to whom they were
directed. It served as the means of identification of the unnamed persons who
were the subject of the first publication; and also of placing upon each one the
particular offence of which the first publication charged him. It not only
served to identify but it also served to point out the person upon whom should
fall the odium of the particular charge made.”
In view of the close and necessary connection between the first publication
and the cartoon, the Court held that “this joinder of the separate parts of
publications in one indictment is permissible even though each separate
publication constitutes libel in itself, provided that all of the different
publications refer to the same subject-matter and are necessary or convenient
for the completion of the other * * *” and upon this statement of the principles
of law involved reversed the ruling of the lower court upon the demurrer. The
case was then remanded, and the defendant, having entered a plea of not guilty,
was brought to trial.
The defense was based upon the contention (1) that the charges against the
complainants Cruz, Santos and Turiano are true, and (2) that they were published
with good motives and for justifiable ends. The trial judge, without making any
findings with regard to the truth or falsity of the charges against the
complainants, held that they were not published with “good motives and for
justifiable ends,” and that the defendant, in making the publication, was
actuated by actual malice and personal spite against the persons libeled.
The appellant contends that the trial judge erred in finding that he was the
editor and manager of “The Independent,” a newspaper in which the offending
matter was published. We are of the opinion that the evidence is ample to
sustain this finding and fully establishes the responsibility of appellant for
all matters published in this newspaper, of which he expressly admitted himself
to be the owner. He also contends that the trial court erred in holding that the
publications complained of are libelous. The defamatory nature of the
publication is, however, so palpable that we cannot regard this contention as
having been seriously advanced.
With regard to the defense that the libelous imputations are true, we are of
the opinion, after a careful consideration of the evidence, that the defendant
has failed completely to make good his contention in this regard.
In the case of Jimenez vs. Reyes (27 Phil. Rep., 52), at page 59,
Justice Trent, writing the opinion of the court, laid down the rule that for the
purpose of determining the meaning of any publication alleged to be libelous
“that construction must be adopted which will give to the matter such a meaning
as is natural and obvious in the plain and ordinary sense in which the public
would naturally understand what was uttered. The published matter alleged to be
libelous must be construed as a whole. In applying these rules to the language
of an alleged libel, the court will disregard any subtle or ingenious
explanation offered by the publisher on being called to account. The whole
question being the effect the publication had upon the minds of the readers, and
they not having been assisted by the offered explanation in reading the article,
it comes too late to have the effect of removing the sting, if any there be,
from the word used in the publication.”
Applying this rule to the publications here under consideration, we are of
the opinion that the readers of defendant’s newspaper would naturally understand
that by them it was intended to impute to the complainant Cruz, the malversation
of funds belonging to the “El Ideal” newspaper company; to the complainant
Turiano the malversation of funds be- longing to the labor unions with which he
was connected and to the complainant Santos the theft of a promissory note from
the office of Diokno. Other derogatory imputations may be inferred, more or less
clearly, from the article and the cartoon, considered together, but there can be
no doubt that those we have mentioned are clearly brought to the mind of the
reader. To make good his defense that the defamatory charges are true, the
burden rested upon defendant of showing that the complainants were in fact
guilty of the reprehensible conduct imputed to them. (Newell on Slander and
Libel, par. 959.) Having arrogated unto himself the authority to cast upon
complainants the stigma of guilt, without giving them an opportunity to be heard
in their defense, he can escape the consequences of his officious assumption of
power by nothing short of positive proof that his accusation was warranted by
the facts, and that in making it public he was not actuated by personal spite
against the complainants, or a mere delight in the propagation of scandal, but
by a good motive and a desire to accomplish a justifiable object. The proof of
the truth of the accusation cannot be made to rest upon mere hearsay, rumors, or
suspicion. It must rest upon positive, direct evidence, upon which a definite
finding may be made by the court. It must embrace all the charges. A
plea of justification of a libel charging more than one offense is not made out
of proof of part of the charges.
We are of the opinion that the evidence adduced by the accused in this case
falls far short of proof of the truth of any of his charges against the
complainants. He has shown that there were rumors in circulation
derogatory to them concerning these matters, and that some people believe them
to be guilty of misconduct, but that is the most that can be said. We,
therefore, hold that his defense of justification has failed.
Having failed to prove the truth of his charges, the motive which
induced him to publish them is of comparatively little important. Were we
convinced that defendant acted in good faith, after careful inquiry, and was the
victim of an honest mistake, we might take that circumstance into consideration
in fixing the penalty. As it is we are fully in accord with the trial court in
the opinion that defendant was actuated by express malice. This is shown by the
insistence with which he has reiterated his charges against complainants and the
methods employed by him in holding them up to contempt and ridicule.
It is frequently suggested in cases of this kind, in which the medium of
publication of the libelous matter is a newspaper, that a conviction of the
responsible party is objectionable as constituting an infringement of the
freedom of the press. Such a criticism involves a fundamental misapprehension
concerning the nature of that freedom. The freedom of the press consists in the
right to print and publish any statement whatever without subjection to the
previous censorship of the government. It does not mean immunity from willful
abuses of that freedom, which, if permitted to go unrebuked, would soon make the
license of an unrestrained press even more odious to the people than would be
the interference of government with the expression of opinion. Certainly a
moment’s reflection will convince anyone approaching the subject with an open
mind that no public service is rendered by the publication in a newspaper of
defamatory statements which are false and were published, not from a
sense of duty, but to gratify the personal spite and animosity of the writer
against the persons defamed. Such is this case. The trial judge, in his
carefully written opinion, said:
“In order to form an opinion as to the degree of malice disclosed by the acts
of the accused, it is sufficient to glance over the thirty issues of his weekly
paper, introduced in evidence by the prosecution …. They disclose the
determination of the accused to hold the complainants up to ridicule, sometimes
by veiled hints, at others by direct expression, exposing to the public gaze
even their physical defects …. It would have been difficult to determine the
malice and evil intention of the accused, which caused the publication of the
article and caricature, had he not, after their publication, so frequently made
mention of the three complainants over so long a period of time, referring to
them in terms of contempt, depicting them, in several issues of ‘The
Independent,’ and especially in the issue of July 31, 1915, as despicable
fellows, scoundrels, and vagabonds.”
Taking into consideration the systematic persecution by the accused of which
the complaining witnesses have been the victims, we are of the opinion that the
Attorney-General is warranted in recommending that a sentence of imprisonment be
imposed in addition to the fine inflicted by the trial court.
It would hardly repay the effort for us to review the decisions of this court
in earlier cases of criminal libel in which the punishment inflicted has been
limited to a fine, and to show why the particular penalty was imposed in each
instance. No two cases are alike. It may well be that the defamatory charges,
though in fact untrue, were made under such circumstances as to convince the
court that the accused believed them to be true and that such a belief
was not unreasonable. Or the proof may disclose that, while the particular
defamatory imputation charged is untrue, the general character of the
complainant is good, which may properly be considered in fixing the penalty or
assessing the damage.
But, even admitting the tendency of the court in the past has been toward
leniency, the conclusion to be drawn from the growing frequency with which the
Libel Law is disregarded would appear to be that it is time to treat offenders
with somewhat greater severity. It would be greatly to be deplored if the
impression were to be created that libels may be published without fear of
personal inconvenience by anyone able and willing to pay a moderate fine for the
privilege. Exemplarity is one of the effects which may properly be expected in
the infliction of a penalty. The purpose of a law penalizing libel and providing
a remedy by civil suit for defamation of character is to encourage persons so
injured to appeal to the courts for vindication rather than to attempt to remedy
or revenge their grievances by taking the law into their own hands.
We, therefore, find the accused to be guilty of the crime of libel as charged
against him in the information, and sentence him to imprisonment for a period of
three months and to the payment of a fine of P600, with costs. So ordered.
Arellano, C. J., Torres, Johnson, and Street, JJ.,
concur.
DISSENTING OPINION
MALCOLM, J., dissenting:
I dissent. Judgment should be affirmed.
ON MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION.
October 1, 1918.
FISHER, J.:
Appellant has moved for reconsideration of the decision rendered in this case
and argues that it is void for lack of jurisdiction upon the ground that before
the decision was filed the accused gave notice of the withdrawal of his
appeal.
We hold that the rule announced in the case of Dee See Choon vs.
Stanley (p. 208, ante) is applicable to criminal as well as to civil
cases, and that, after a case has been heard and is submitted to the court for
decision, the appellant cannot, at his election, withdraw the appeal. As was
stated by Justice Torres in the case of Bautista vs. Johnson (2 Phil.
Rep., 230), with respect to an appeal to a Court of First Instance from a
municipal court * * * “before the trial has commenced, and a hearing has
been had before, the judge * * * having jurisdiction over the appeal, the
right of the appellant remains intact to withdraw his appeal * * *.” Nothing
contrary to this doctrine, which is supported by the decisions of many American
courts (Merrill vs. Dearing, 24 Minn., 179; In re Seattle, 40
Wash., 450) was decided in the case of U. S. vs. Samio (3 Phil. Rep.,
691), inasmuch as the appeal in that case was withdrawn before the hearing.
The motion is denied.
Arellano, C. J., Torres, Johnson, Street, and Malcolm, JJ.,
concur.