SolGen asks SC to acquit Maria Ressa, Reynaldo Santos in cyber libel case

MANILA, Philippines – Citing its position as “the Folks’s Tribune,” the Workplace of the Solicitor Normal (OSG) filed a manifestation with the Supreme Courtroom (SC) recommending that the justices acquit Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and former Rappler researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. of their Duterte-time cyber libel case.

“… within the trustworthy discharge of her duties as an officer of the courtroom and because the Folks’s Tribune, the Solicitor Normal most respectfully recommends the acquittal of petitioners on the idea of prescription,” stated Solicitor Normal Darlene Berberabe in a manifestation dated March 6, and launched on Tuesday, March 10.

Manila Regional Trial Courtroom (RTC) Department 46 convicted Ressa and Santos of cyber libel in June 2020 — underneath then-president Rodrigo Duterte’s administration — over a cyber libel grievance filed by businessman Wilfredo Keng.

The Courtroom of Appeals denied Ressa and Santos’ attraction in 2022, prompting them to carry the case to the SC.

In recommending the acquittal, the OSG stated Keng sued Ressa and Santos after the prescription interval for the submitting of libel circumstances had already lapsed. It’s one of many key arguments, too, of Ressa and Santos.

The Inflicting case

The OSG cited the Courtroom’s choice in Berteni Inflicting v. Folks, launched in October 2023, which clarified the prescription interval for cyber libel circumstances. Prescription interval, which varies from case to case, is the timeframe the place a lawsuit could be filed. A authorized motion filed past the prescription interval is invalid.

In keeping with the Inflicting case determined by the SC Third Division, the prescription interval for cyber libel is just one 12 months, and never 12 years. It added that cyber libel’s prescription ought to be primarily based on the Revised Penal Code (RPC), which units prescription at one 12 months, and never Republic Act No. 3326 that units the prescription to 12 years.

The OSG stated that within the Inflicting case, the SC clarified that the Part 4(c)(4) of RA No. 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act didn’t create a completely new defamation offense for functions of prescription, however merely implements the RPC’s libel provisions that are articles 353 and 355.

Taking exception

The OSG stated it “can’t shirk from its responsibility to current to the Courtroom a place that, in its thought-about judgment, finest serves the Authorities and the Folks, according to its accountability to share within the job of allotting justice.”

It argued that the solicitor common “should all the time uphold the legislation, even when doing so requires it to depart from, or take exception to, the place earlier superior by the trial prosecution within the case.”

The OSG added that the Inflicting case, in impact, rescinded the Tolentino v Folks case, which states that cyber libel’s prescription interval is 15 years.

When a Manila courtroom convicted Ressa and Santos of cyber libel, then-presiding Decide Rainelda Estacio-Montesa invoked Tolentino v. Folks.

The OSG stated the Inflicting case “clarified that prescription is ruled by paragraph 4, not paragraph 2, of Article 90 of the Revised Penal Code, such that cyber libel prescribes in a single 12 months. Additional, the Courtroom held that the prescriptive interval is counted from the date the offense is found by the offended celebration, the authorities, or their brokers; and that publication turns into materials solely when it coincided with such discovery.”

“Upon a thought-about rethinking of the demand to stability the safety of fame, privateness, and dignity with the constitutionally assured rights and liberties, the OSG now accepts the Courtroom’s judgment in Inflicting and its consequent utility to the moment case,” it added.

The OSG stated its advice “doesn’t dilute the State’s reliable curiosity in punishing cyber libel” however “merely provides impact to the temporal limitation mounted by legislation.”

The “solely lawful disposition is acquittal.”

Timeline

Keng filed a cyber libel grievance with the Nationwide Bureau of Investigation towards Ressa and Santos in 2018 on the peak of the Duterte authorities assaults towards Rappler and impartial information organizations — or six years after the story about him got here out in Rappler.

Keng’s grievance stated he found the 2012 story, which linked him to alleged crimes, in 2016. The justice division underneath Jose Calida filed the case earlier than a Manila courtroom in February 2019.

The OSG stated that since Keng found the article in 2016, the prescriptive interval had already lapsed in 2017 — and the submitting of the grievance, the NBI probe, and the submitting of the case with the courtroom have been all performed after the prescription’s expiration.

“In accepting Inflicting’s delicate balancing of rights and pursuits, the OSG thus shares the Honorable Courtroom’s measured method in Disini and associated circumstances: whereas the State could punish libel to guard assured rights, its enforcement should be utilized with restraint in order to not sweep in, or chill, constitutionally protected, non-libelous expression,” the OSG defined.

“Relatedly, and with out enlarging the problems, the OSG notes that the amicus submissions of the UN Particular Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, and IBAHRI equally underscore the identical worth after they advocate for clear, predictable limiting ideas in cyber libel prosecutions, particularly the place the speech implicates issues of public curiosity, in order that lawful expression will not be unduly chilled,” it added. – Rappler.com