EN BANC
MUSTANG LUMBER, INC., petitioner, vs. HON. COURT OF APPEALS, HON. FULGENCIO S. FACTORAN, JR., Secretary, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), and ATTY. VINCENT A. ROBLES, Chief, Special Actions and Investigation Division, DENR, respondents.
PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, petitioner, vs. HON. TERESITA DIZON-CAPULONG, in her capacity as the Presiding Judge, Regional Trial Court National Capital Judicial Region, Branch 172, Valenzuela, Metro Manila, and RI CHUY PO, respondents.
MUSTANG LUMBER, INC., petitioner, vs. HON. COURT OF APPEALS, ATTY. VINCENT A. ROBLES, Chief, Special Actions and Investigation Division, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), ATTY. NESTOR V. GAPUSAN, TIRSO P. PARIAN, JR., and FELIPE H. CALLORINA, JR., respondents.
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G.R. No. 106424
The petitioner had moved to quash the information in Criminal Case No. 324-V-91 on the ground that it does not charge an offense. Respondent Judge Dizon-Capulong granted the motion reasoning that the subject matter of the information in the CRIMINAL CASE is LUMBER, which is neither "timber" nor "other forest product" under Section 68 of P.D. No. 705, as amended, and hence, possession thereof without the required legal documents is not prohibited and penalized under the said section.
Under paragraph (a), Section 3, Rule 117 of the Rules of Court, an information may be quashed on the ground that the facts alleged therein do not constitute an offense. It has been said that "the test for the correctness of this ground is the sufficiency of the averments in the information, that is, whether the facts alleged, if hypothetically admitted, constitute the elements of the offense,[1] and matters aliunde will not be considered." Anent the sufficiency of the information, Section 6, Rule 110 of the Rules of Court requires, inter alia, that the information state the acts or omissions complained of as constituting the offense.
Respondent Ri Chuy Po is charged with the violation of Section 68 of P.D. No. 705, as amended by E.O. No. 277, which provides:
SEC. 68. Cutting, Gathering and/or collecting Timber, or Other Forest Products Without License. — Any person who shall cut, gather, collect, remove timber or other forest products from any forest land, or timber from alienable or disposable public land, or from private land, without any authority, or possess timber or other forest products without the legal documents as required under existing forest laws and regulations, shall be punished with the penalties imposed under Articles 309 and 310 of the Revised Penal Code: Provided, That in the case of partnerships, associations, or corporations, the officers who ordered the cutting, gathering, collection or possession shall be liable, and if such officers are aliens, they shall, in addition to the penalty, be deported without further proceedings on the part of the Commission on Immigration and Deportation.
The Court shall further order the confiscation in favor of the government of the timber or any forest products cut, gathered, collected, removed, or possessed, as well as the machinery, equipment, implements and tools illegally used in the area where the timber or forest products are found.
Punished then in this section are (1) the cutting, gathering, collection, or removal of timber or other forest products from the places therein mentioned without any authority; and (b) possession of timber or other forest products without the legal documents as required under existing forest laws and regulations.
Indeed, the word lumber does not appear in Section 68. But conceding ex gratia that this omission amounts to an exclusion of lumber from the section's coverage, do the facts averred in the information in the CRIMINAL CASE validly charge a violation of the said section?
A cursory reading of the information readily leads us to an infallible conclusion that lumber is not solely its subject matter. It is evident therefrom that what are alleged to be in the possession of the private respondent, without the required legal documents, are truckloads of
(1) almaciga and lauan; and
(2) approximately 200,000 bd. ft. of lumber and shorts of various species including almaciga and supa.
The “almaciga and lauan” specifically mentioned in no. (1) are not described as lumber.” They cannot refer to the “lumber” in no. (2) because they are separated by the words “approximately 200,000 bd. ft.” with the conjunction “and,” and not with the preposition “of.” They must then be raw forest products or, more specifically, timbers under Section 3(q) of P.D. No. 705, as amended, which reads:
SEC. 3. Definitions. —
xxx xxx xxx
(q) Forest product means timber, pulpwood, firewood, bark, tree top, resin, gum, wood, oil, honey, beeswax, nipa, rattan, or other forest growth such as grass, shrub, and flowering plant, the associated water, fish, game, scenic, historical, recreational and geological resources in forest lands.
It follows then that lumber is only one of the items covered by the information. The public and the private respondents obviously miscomprehended the averments in the information. Accordingly, even if lumber is not included in Section 68, the other items therein as noted above fall within the ambit of the said section, and as to them, the information validly charges an offense.
Our respected brother, Mr. Justice Jose C. Vitug, suggests in his dissenting opinion that this Court go beyond the four corners of the information for enlightenment as to whether the information exclusively refers to lumber. With the aid of the pleadings and the annexes thereto, he arrives at the conclusion that “only lumber has been envisioned in the indictment.”
The majority is unable to subscribe to his view. First, his proposition violates the rule that only the facts alleged in the information vis-a-vis the law violated must be considered in determining whether an information charges an offense.
Second, the pleadings and annexes he resorted to are insufficient to justify his conclusion. On the contrary, the Joint Affidavit of Melencio Jalova, Jr., and Araman Belleng, which is one of the annexes he referred to,[2] cannot lead one to infer that what the team seized was all lumber.
Paragraph 8 thereof expressly states:
8. That when inside the compound, the team found approximately four (4) truckloads of narra shorts, trimmings and slabs and a negligible amount of narra lumber, and approximately 200,000 bd. ft. of lumber and shorts of various species including almaciga and supa which are classified as prohibited wood species. (Italics supplied)
In the same vein, the dispositive portion of the resolution[3] of the investigating prosecutor, which served as the basis for the filing of the information, does not limit itself to lumber; thus:
WHEREFORE, premises considered, it is hereby recommended that an information be filed against respondent Ri Chuy Po for illegal possession of 200,000 bd. ft. of lumber consisting of almaciga and supa and for illegal shipment of almaciga and lauan in violation of Sec. 63 of PD 705 as amended by E.O. 277, series of 1987. (Italics supplied)
The foregoing disquisitions should not, in any manner, be construed as an affirmance of the respondent Judge's conclusion that lumber is excluded from the coverage of Section 68 of P.D. No. 705, as amended, and thus possession thereof without the required legal documents is not a crime. On the contrary, this Court rules that such possession is penalized in the said section because lumber is included in the term timber.
The Revised Forestry Code contains no definition of either timber or lumber. While the former is included in forest products as defined in paragraph (q) of Section 3, the latter is found in paragraph (aa) of the same section in the definition of “Processing plant;” which reads:
(aa) Processing plant is any mechanical set-up, machine or combination of machine used for the processing of logs and other forest raw materials into lumber, veneer, plywood, wallboard, block-board, paper board, pulp, paper or other finished wood products.
This simply means that lumber is a processed log or processed forest raw material. Clearly, the Code uses the term lumber in its ordinary or common usage. In the 1993 copyright edition of Webster's Third New International Dictionary, lumber is defined, inter alia, as “timber or logs after being prepared for the market.”[4] Simply put, lumber is a processed log or timber.
It is settled that in the absence of legislative intent to the contrary, words and phrases used in a statute should be given their plain, ordinary, and common usage meaning.[5] And insofar as possession of timber without the required legal documents is concerned, Section 68 of P.D. No. 705, as amended, makes no distinction between raw or processed timber. Neither should we. Ubi lex non distanguit nec nos distinguere debemus.
Indisputably, respondent Judge Teresita Dizon-Capulong of Branch 172 of the RTC of Valenzuela, Metro Manila, committed grave abuse of discretion in granting the motion to quash the information in the CRIMINAL CASE and in dismissing the said case.
G.R. No. 104988
We find this petition to be without merit. The petitioner has miserably failed to show that the Court of Appeals committed any reversible error in its assailed decision of 29 November 1991.
It was duly established that on 1 April 1990, the petitioner's truck with Plate No. CCK-322 was coming out from the petitioner's lumberyard loaded with lauan and almaciga lumber of different sizes and dimensions which were not accompanied with the required invoices and transport documents. The seizure of such truck and its cargo was a valid exercise of the power vested upon a forest officer or employee by Section 80 of P.D. No. 705, as amended by P.D. No. 1775. Then, too, as correctly held by the trial court and the Court of Appeals in the FIRST CIVIL CASE, the search was conducted on a moving vehicle. Such a search could be lawfully conducted without a search warrant.
Search of a moving vehicle is one of the five doctrinally accepted exceptions to the constitutional mandate[6] that no search or seizure shall be made except by virtue of a warrant issued by a judge after personally determining the existence of probable cause. The other exceptions are (1) search as an incident to a lawful arrest, (2) seizure of evidence in plain view, (3) customs searches, and (4) consented warrantless search.[7]
We also affirm the rulings of both the trial court and the Court of Appeals that the search on 4 April 1990 was a continuation of the search on 3 April 1990 done under and by virtue of the search warrant issued on 3 April 1990 by Executive Judge Osorio. Under Section 9, Rule 126 of the Rules of Court, a search warrant has a lifetime of ten days. Hence, it could be served at any time within the said period, and if its object or purpose cannot be accomplished in one day, the same may be continued the following day or days until completed. Thus, when the search under a warrant on one day was interrupted, it may be continued under the same warrant the following day, provided it is still within the ten-day period.[8]
As to the final plea of the petitioner that the search was illegal because possession of lumber without the required legal documents is not illegal under Section 68 of P.D. No. 705, as amended, since lumber is neither specified therein nor included in the term forest product, the same hardly merits further discussion in view of our ruling in G.R. No. 106424.
G.R. No. 123784
The allegations and arguments set forth in the petition in this case palpably fail to show prima facie that a reversible error has been committed by the Court of Appeals in its challenged decision of 31 July 1995 and resolution of 6 February 1996 in CA-G.R. SP No. 33778. We must, forthwith, deny it for utter want of merit. There is no need to require the respondents to comment on the petition.
The Court of Appeals correctly dismissed the petitioner's appeal from the judgment of the trial court in the SECOND CIVIL CASE. The petitioner never disputed the fact that its lumber-dealer's license or permit had been suspended by Secretary Factoran on 23 April 1990. The suspension was never lifted, and since the license had only a lifetime of up to 25 September 1990, the petitioner has absolutely no right to possess, sell, or otherwise dispose of lumber. Accordingly, Secretary Factoran or his authorized representative had the authority to seize the lumber pursuant to Section 68-A of P.D. No. 705, as amended, which provides as follows:
Section 68-A. Administrative Authority of the Department Head or his Duly Authorized Representative to Order Confiscation. — In all cases of violations of this Code or other forest laws, rules and regulations, the Department Head or his duly authorized representative may order the confiscation of any forest products illegally cut, gathered, removed, or possessed or abandoned. . . .
The petitioner's insistence that possession or sale of lumber is not penalized must also fail in view of our disquisition and ruling on the same issue in G.R. No. 106424. Besides, the issue is totally irrelevant in the SECOND CIVIL CASE which involves administrative seizure as a consequence of the violation of the suspension of the petitioner's license as lumber dealer.
All told then, G.R. No. 104988 and G.R. No. 123784 are nothing more than rituals to cover up blatant violations of the Revised Forestry Code of the Philippines (P.D. No. 705), as amended. They are presumably trifling attempts to block the serious efforts of the DENR to enforce the decree, efforts which deserve the commendation of the public in light of the urgent need to take firm and decisive action against despoilers of our forests whose continuous destruction only ensures to the generations to come, if not the present, an inheritance of parched earth incapable of sustaining life. The Government must not tire in its vigilance to protect the environment by prosecuting without fear or favor any person who dares to violate our laws for the utilization and protection of our forests.
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[1] FLORENZ D. REGALADO, Remedial Law Compendium, vol. 2, Seventh Revised ed. [1995], 392, citing People vs. Supnad, 7 SCRA 603 [1963]. See also VICENTE J. FRANCISCO, The Revised Rules of Court (Criminal Procedure), 2nd, ed. [1969] 579; MANUEL V. MORAN, Comments of the Rules of Court, vol. 4. [1980], 222.
[2] Rollo, G.R. No. 106424, 41-42 (Annex "C" of Petition).
[3] Id., 50-55 (Annex "I" of Petition).
[4] Page 1345.
[5] RUBEN E. AGPALO, Statutory Construction, Second ed. [1990], 131.
[6] Section 2, Article III of the Constitution, which reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures of whatever nature and for any purpose shall be inviolable, and no search warrant or warrant of arrest shall issue except upon probable cause to be determined personally by the judge after examination under oath or affirmation of the complainant and the witnesses, he may produce, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
[7] People vs. Fernandez, 239 SCRA 174 [1994]. In this book on Remedial Law, vol. 4 (Criminal Procedure), 1992 ed., 669, retired Justice Oscar M. Herrera of the Court of Appeals mentions a sixth exception, viz., search based on probable cause under extraordinary circumstances, citing People vs. Posadas, 188 SCRA 288 [1990]; Valmonte vs. De Villa, 178 SCRA 211 [1989]; People vs. Maspil, 188 SCRA 751 [1990]; People vs. Sucro, 195 SCRA 388 [1991]; People vs. Malmstedt, 198 SCRA 401 [1991].
[8] FLORENZ D. REGALADO, Remedial Law Compendium, vol. 2, Seventh Revised Ed. [1995], 526, citing Uy Kheytin vs. Villareal 42 Phil. 886 [1920].
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