ANISAH IMPAL SANGCA, PETITIONER, VS. THE CITY PROSECUTOR OF CEBU CITY AND THE PRESIDING JUDGE, REGIONAL TRIAL COURT, BRANCH 58, CEBU CITY, RESPONDENTS.

Sangca versus City Prosecutor of Cebu City

The Case

This is a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Anisah Impal Sangca, seeking the release of Lovely Impal Adam, who was detained in the Cebu City Jail for an alleged violation of Section 5, Article 2 of Republic Act Number 9165, the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. The case matters because it shows the Supreme Court declining to reach the merits of a detention controversy once the detention has already ended, and it illustrates the narrow, liberty-protecting function of the writ of habeas corpus. It also leaves behind a striking record of a buy-bust operation in which the prosecution itself found no probable cause.

Procedural History

After the entrapment operation, the inquest prosecutor recommended the dismissal of the case, but the City Prosecutor disapproved that recommendation. An information for violation of Section 5, Article 2 of Republic Act Number 9165 was therefore filed against Adam before the Regional Trial Court of Cebu City, Branch 58. On petition for review, the Secretary of Justice found no probable cause and directed the City Prosecutor to withdraw the information; the motion for reconsideration filed by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency was denied. Presiding Judge Gabriel T. Ingles heard the motion to withdraw and, on January twenty-six, two thousand seven, granted it and ordered the immediate release of the accused unless another valid ground existed for her continued detention. Adam was in fact released on that order. Sangca then went directly to the Supreme Court by petition for habeas corpus, praying for the issuance of the writ and the release of Adam.

Facts

In the first week of July 2006, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, Regional Office Seven, received information that Adam was engaged in illegal drug trafficking in Cebu City and nearby places. A team planned an entrapment operation. On the evening of July seventh, an operative and an informant met Adam at Pizza Hut in Fuente Osmeña, Cebu City. Adam told the operative that the item was in her car, and at the parking area she took from the compartment of her Toyota Fortuner one heat-sealed transparent plastic sachet of white crystalline substance and handed it to him. He pressed it, confirmed it appeared to be shabu, gave the pre-arranged signal, and held her. The team seized her cellular phone and the vehicle. The substance, weighing fifty and twenty-seven hundredths grams, tested positive for methamphetamine hydrochloride.

Adam denied the charge. She claimed she was a trader of ready-to-wear clothing who supplies boutiques in Cebu City and operates a beauty parlor in Talamban. On that evening she was at Pizza Hut with her four children and their caregivers, meeting a friend named Ana, who was to pay a loan. Ana later spoke with a woman introduced as Rose, and Adam saw Ana hand over a parcel while Rose handed Ana a green bag. When Adam was about to leave, Ana asked to hitch a ride. Outside, a vehicle blocked her car; men alighted, entered her vehicle, demanded the bag, pointed guns at her and her children, and claimed to be drug enforcement agents arresting her for illegal drug trafficking. She never recovered her green bag or its contents.

At the agency office she met a certain Ryan Rubi, who had been arrested hours earlier and, by his account, was required to produce a drug trafficker in exchange for his release. He said the officers were after Rose, that Rose had been arrested and conditionally released on condition that she produce someone to take her place, and that he overheard a certain Ana say she would produce Adam to take her place. The police blotter even ascribed Adam's vehicle to Rubi and Rubi's vehicle to her. The inquest prosecutor recommended dismissal, but the City Prosecutor disapproved. The Secretary of Justice later found no probable cause, noting that no payment was ever made, no buy-bust money was presented, and the certificate of inventory showed none. The trial judge likewise found no mention of buy-bust money in the pre-operation report or the affidavits, and could not tell from the blotter excerpts to which case the boodle money referred. He granted the motion to withdraw the information and ordered Adam's release.

Issues

• Whether or not the petition for a writ of habeas corpus has been rendered moot by the release of the person detained.
• Whether or not the Court should still resolve the merits of the petition notwithstanding that release.

Applicable Provisions

Section 5, Article 2 of Republic Act Number 9165, the provision under which Adam was charged, provides:

Section 5. Sale, Trading, Administration, Dispensing, Delivery, Distribution and Transportation of Any Dangerous Drug and/or Controlled Precursor and Essential Chemical. — The penalty of twelve (12) years and one (1) day to twenty (20) years and a fine ranging from One hundred thousand pesos (P100,000.00) to Five hundred thousand pesos (P500,000.00) shall be imposed upon any person, who, unless authorized by law, shall sell, trade, administer, dispense, deliver, give away to another, distribute, dispatch in transit or transport any dangerous drug, including any and all species of opium poppy regardless of the quantity and purity involved, or shall act as a broker in any of such transactions.

This is the offense charged in the information, and the alleged sale is what the buy-bust operation was meant to establish.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the petition had become moot. The records showed that Adam had been released upon order of the trial judge on January twenty-six, two thousand seven. The Court restated the nature of the remedy in these terms:

A writ of habeas corpus extends to all cases of illegal confinement or detention in which any person is deprived of his liberty, or in which the rightful custody of any person is withheld from the person entitled to it. Its essential object and purpose is to inquire into all manner of involuntary restraint and to relieve a person from it if such restraint is illegal.

Because the object of the writ is to relieve a person from unlawful restraint, and the restraint had already ceased by judicial order, there was nothing left for the writ to accomplish. On the second issue, the Court did not proceed to the merits. Having found the petition moot, it simply dismissed it, without passing on the sufficiency of the evidence or the correctness of the trial judge's findings.

Doctrine

First, the writ of habeas corpus reaches every case of illegal confinement or detention, and every case in which the rightful custody of a person is withheld from the person entitled to it. Its object is to inquire into all manner of involuntary restraint and to relieve the person from it if the restraint is illegal. Second, the singular function of the petition is to protect and secure the basic freedom of physical liberty. Third, where the person detained has already been released by order of the trial court, the petition becomes moot and is dismissed, and the Court will not resolve the merits. A Bar answer should tie these rules to the quoted definition: the remedy is tested by the fact of restraint, so once the restraint ends, the remedy loses its object.

Disposition

The petition was dismissed, the Court having found it moot because Adam had already been released on the trial court's order.

Remember This

Memorize the line that the singular function of a petition for habeas corpus is to protect and secure the basic freedom of physical liberty. Examiners use this case to test the mootness rule in habeas corpus, and to remind candidates that the writ inquires into the fact of restraint, not into the guilt or innocence of the person restrained.