US v. De Guzman  G.R. No. L-9144 (March 27, 1915) 

FACTS:

Defendant De Guzman, along with Pedro and Serapio Macarling, was convicted of asesinato (murder) and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The evidence of record leaves no room for doubt that, on the day and at place mentioned in the information, De Guzman who was walking through a field with Pedro and Serapio Macarling and Rufino Garin, deceased, struck the latter on the head, knocked him down and held him on the ground while Pedro Macarling stabbed him to death. Information was duly filed charging De Guzman, jointly with the two Macarlings, with the murder of Guzman entered into an agreement with the fiscal under the terms of which he promised to appear and testify as a witness for the Government at the trial of his coaccused, and to tell the truth as to all that occurred, provided the information was dismissed as to him and he himself was not brought to trial. With the consent of the court, and in pursuance of this agreement, he was not arraigned nor brought to trial, and the information was dismissed as to him. One of his coaccused pleaded guilty and the other not guilty, and thereafter the case came on for trial. after several witnesses had been called, De Guzman was placed on the witness stand, and denied all knowledge of the murder. He denied that he had ever said anything implicating his coaccused, and swore that a statement made by him before a justice of the peace was false, and that it had been made through fear of certain police officer.

The Solicitor General relying on provisions of General orders recommends the discharge of the appellant.

Section 34, 35, and 36 of General orders No. 58, upon which counsel for defense and the Solicitor­General rely, are as follows:

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 thirty­four and thirty­five shall amount to an acquittal of the defendant discharged, and shall be a bar to future prosecution for the same offense.

The question raised on this appeal being his right to exemption from prosecution for the crime thus committed, on the ground that a former information, charging the same offense, had been dismissed as to him in order that he might testify as a witness for the prosecution.

ISSUE: Should the defendant be discharged from prosecution even if he did not faithfully comply as to the sworn agreement made prior the trial which entitled him immunity as witness for the States

HELD:

No, the defendant should not be discharged.

General rule of statutory construction that courts may take judicial notice of the original and history of the statutes which they are called upon to construe and administer, and of the facts which affect their derivation, validity and operation. Looking at the legislative history of the statute under the old system of criminal procedure with a system borrowed on large part from English and American precedents, it can be gleaned that faithful performance is necessary to avail of the bar to criminal prosecution. Failure of the Defendant in the case at bar to faithfully and honestly carry out his undertaking to appear as witness and to tell the truth at the trial of his co-accused deprived him of the right to plead his formal dismissal as a bar to his prosecution.