Case Digests: U.S. v. De Guzman, G.R. No. L-9144 March 27, 1915
Rule 120: Judgment, Discharge | Criminal Procedure
Facts:
Venancio de Guzman was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
De Guzman, along with Pedro and Serapio Macarling and Rufino Garin, was allegedly walking through a field when he struck Garin on the head and held him down while Pedro Macarling stabbed him to death.
De Guzman had a prior agreement with the prosecutor to testify as a witness for the government in exchange for the dismissal of the murder charge against him. One of his co-accused pleaded guilty and the other not guilty, and thereafter the case came on for trial.
De Guzman appeared as a witness at the trial but denied any knowledge of the murder and made false statements, disavowing his previous statements.
The Solicitor-General recommended the discharge of De Guzman based on certain sections of General Orders No. 58, which allow for the discharge of a defendant to be a witness for the prosecution.
Issue:
WoN De Guzman had the right to exemption from prosecution based on the prior dismissal of the murder charge against him in order to testify as a witness for the prosecution. (NO)
Held:
Section 34, 35, and 36 of General orders No. 58:
SEC. 34. When two or more persons shall be included in the same charge, the court, at any time before the defendants have entered upon their defense or upon the application of the counsel of the Government, may direct any defendant to be discharged, that he may be a witness for the United States.
SEC. 35. When two or more persons shall be included in the same charge, and the court shall be of opinion in respect to a particular defendant that there is not sufficient evidence to put him on his defense, it must order him to be discharged before the evidence is closed, that he may be a witness for his codefendant.
SEC. 36. The order indicated in sections thirty-four and thirty-five shall amount to an acquittal of the defendant discharged, and shall be a bar to future prosecution for the same offense.
From a review of the history and development of the practice under consideration, and reasoning along the line of the above cited, we are all agreed that the failure of the accused in the case at bar, faithfully and honestly to carry out his undertaking to appear as a witness and to tell the truth at the trial of his co-accused, deprived him of the right to plead his former dismissal as a bar to his prosecution in the case now before us.
We have found considerable difficulty however in coming to an agreement as to the precise scope of the rule thus adopted. All are agreed that in the absence of the above cited provisions of section 36 of General Orders No. 58, which provides that an order discharging one of two or more accused persons that he may be a witness for the prosecution "shall amount to an acquittal of the defendant thus discharged and shall be a bar to further prosecution for the same offense," a corrupt and fraudulent agreement, or an agreement not faithfully with by the accused would be no bar to further prosecution.
Some of the members of the court are of opinion that notwithstanding this provision, such agreements are always vitiated by the failure of the accused to testify honestly and faithfully, it matters not whether the accused is discharged at or before the trial, other members of the court, of whom the writer of this opinion is one, are inclined to believe that while the general rule as held by the majority is applicable in all cases where the agreement is made and the order of discharge is entered before the trial actually begins, it is limited and restricted by the provisions of section 36, and that in any case wherein an accused person is thus discharged after he has entered on trial, the discharge amounts to an acquittal and bar a further prosecution. This on the assumption (questioned by various members of the court) that sections 34, 35 and 36 purport only to deal with, and do in fact deal only with incidents of "the trial," and declare merely what the procedure shall being cases of such discharges after the trial has begun.
But however this may be, we are all agreed that in the case at bar, in which the order discharging defendant was made before the trial began, appellant was not entitled to have the order of discharge held to amount to an acquittal or a bar to further prosecution.
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