Rubrico vs.

Macapagal-Arroyo

GR No. 183871 February 19, 2013

Facts:

On 03 April 2007, Lourdes Rubrico, chair of Ugnayan ng Maralita para sa

Gawa Adhikan, was abducted by armed men belonging to the 301st Air
Intelligence and Security Squadron (AISS) based in Lipa City while attending
a Lenten pabasa in Dasmarinas, Cavite. She was brought to and detained at
the air base without charges. She was released a week after relentless
interrogation, but only after she signed a statement that she would be a
military asset.

Despite her release, she was tailed on at least 2 occasions. Hence, Lourdes
filed a complaint with the Office of the Ombudsman a criminal complaint for
kidnapping and arbitrary detention and grave misconduct against Cuaresma,
Alfaro, Santana, and Jonathan, but nothing has happened. She likewise
reported the threats and harassment incidents to the Dasmarinas municipal
and Cavite provincial police stations, but nothing eventful resulted from their
investigation.

Meanwhile, the human rights group Karapatan conducted an investigation

which indicated that men belonging to the Armed Forces of the Philippines
(AFP) led the abduction of Lourdes. Based on such information, Rubrico filed
a petition for the writ of amparo with the Supreme Court on 25 October
2007, praying that respondents be ordered to desist from performing any
threatening act against the security of petitioners and for the Ombudsman to
immediately file an information for kidnapping qualified with the aggravating
circumstance of gender of the offended party. Rubrico also prayed for
damages and for respondents to produce documents submitted to any of
them on the case of Lourdes.

The Supreme Court issued the desired writ and then referred the petition to
the Court of Appeals (CA) for summary hearing and appropriate action. At
the hearing conducted on 20 November 2007, the CA granted petitioner’s
motion that the petition and writ be served on Darwin Sy/Reyes, Santana,
Alfaro, Cuaresma, and Jonathan. By a separate resolution, the CA dropped
the President as respondent in the case.
On 31 July 2008, after due proceedings, the CA rendered its partial
judgment, dismissing the petition with respect to Esperon, Razon, Roquero,
Gomez, and Ombudsman.

Hence, the petitioners filed a Petition for Review on Certiorari.

Issues:

1. Whether President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as party respondent, should

be dropped from the case that was dismissed by CA.

2. Whether the doctrine of command responsibility is applicable in an

amparo petition.

Held:

1. YES. The presidential immunity from suit remains preserved under our
system of government, albeit not expressly reserved in the present
constitution. Addressing a concern of his co-members in the 1986
Constitutional Commission on the absence of an express provision on the
matter, Fr. Joaquin Bernas, S.J. observed that it was already understood in
jurisprudence that the President may not be sued during his or her tenure.

Settled is the doctrine that the President, during his tenure of office or actual
incumbency, may not be sued in any civil or criminal case, and there is no
need to provide for it in the Constitution or law. It will degrade the dignity of
the high office of the President, the Head of State, if he can be dragged into
court litigations while serving as such.

The Court also affirmed the dismissal of the amparo case against other
respondents for failure of the petition to allege ultimate facts as to make
out a case against that body for the enforced disappearance of Lourdes and
the threats and harassment that followed.

2. Doctrine of Command Responsibility has little, if at all, bearing in

amparo proceedings - Command responsibility, as a concept defined,
developed, and applied under international law, has little, if at all, bearing in
amparo proceedings. The evolution of the command responsibility doctrine
finds its context in the development of laws of war and armed combats.
According to Fr. Bernas, command responsibility, in its simplest terms,
means theresponsibility of commanders for crimes committed by
subordinate members of the armed forces or other persons subject to their
control in international wars or domestic conflict. In this sense, command
responsibility is properly a form of criminal complicity.

The Hague Conventions of 1907 adopted the doctrine of command

responsibility, foreshadowing the present-day precept of holding a superior
accountable for the atrocities committed by his subordinates should he be
remiss in his duty of control over them. As then formulated, command
responsibility is an omission mode of individual criminal liability, whereby the
superior is made responsible for crimes committed by his subordinates for
failing to prevent or punish the perpetrators.

There is no Philippine law that provides for criminal liability under

the Doctrine of Command Responsibility – While there are several
pending bills on command responsibility, there is still no Philippine law that
provides for criminal liability under that doctrine. It may plausibly be
contended that command responsibility, as legal basis to hold military/police
commanders liable for extra-legal killings, enforced disappearances, or
threats, may be made applicable to this jurisdiction on the theory that the
command responsibility doctrine now constitutes a principle of international
law or customary international law in accordance with the incorporation
clause of the Constitution. Still, it would be inappropriate to apply to these
proceedings the doctrine of command responsibility, as the CA seemed to
have done, as a form of criminal complicity through omission, for individual
respondents criminal liability, if there be any, is beyond the reach of
amparo. In other words, the Court does not rule in such proceedings on any
issue of criminal culpability, even if incidentally a crime or an infraction of an
administrative rule may have been committed.

Reluctance of the amparo petitioners or their witnesses to cooperate

ought not to pose a hindrance to the police in pursuing, on its own
initiative, the investigation in question to its natural end – The right
to security of persons is a guarantee of the protection of one’s right by the
government. And this protection includes conducting effective investigations
of extra-legal killings, enforced disappearances, or threats of the same kind.
The nature and importance of an investigation are captured in the Velasquez
Rodriguez case, in which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
pronounced: [The duty to investigate] must be undertaken in a serious
manner and not as a mere formality preordained to be ineffective. An
investigation must have an objective and be assumed by the State as its
own legal duty, not a step taken by private interests that depends upon the
initiative of the victim or his family or upon offer of proof, without an
effective search for the truth by the government.

The remedy of amparo ought to be resorted to and granted

judiciously – The privilege of the writ of amparo is envisioned basically to
protect and guarantee the rights to life, liberty, and security of persons, free
from fears and threats that vitiate the quality of this life. It is an
extraordinary writ conceptualized and adopted in light of and in response to
the prevalence of extra-legal killings and enforced disappearances.
Accordingly, the remedy ought to be resorted to and granted judiciously, lest
the ideal sought by the Amparo Rule be diluted and undermined by the
indiscriminate filing of amparo petitions for purposes less than the desire to
secure amparo reliefs and protection and/or on the basis of unsubstantiated
allegations

DISPOSITIVE:

The Supreme Court partially granted the petition for review. It issued a
decision as follows:

(1) Affirming the dropping of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from

the petition;

(2) Affirming the dismissal of the amparo case as against Gen. Hermogenes
Esperon, and P/Dir. Gen. Avelino Razon, insofar as it tended, under the
command responsibility principle, to attach accountability and responsibility
to them, as then AFP Chief of Staff and then PNP Chief, for the alleged
enforced disappearance of Lourdes and the ensuing harassments allegedly
committed against petitioners. The dismissal of the petition with respect to
the Ombudsman is also affirmed for failure of the petition to allege ultimate
facts as to make out a case against that body for the enforced
disappearance of Lourdes and the threats and harassment that followed; and
(3) Directing the incumbent Chief of Staff, AFP, or his successor, and the
incumbent Director-General of the PNP, or his successor, to ensure that the
investigations already commenced by their respective units on the alleged
abduction of Lourdes Rubrico and the alleged harassments and threats she
and her daughterswere made to endure are pursued with extraordinary
diligence as required by Sec. 17 of the Amparo Rule. The Chief of Staff of
the AFP and Director-General of the PNP are directed to order their
subordinateofficials, in particular, to do the following:

(a) Determine based on records, past and present, the identities and
locations of respondents Maj. Darwin Sy, a.k.a. Darwin Reyes, Jimmy
Santana, Ruben Alfaro, Capt. Angelo Cuaresma, and one Jonathan; and
submit certifications of this determination to the OMBUDSMAN with copy
furnished to petitioners, the CA, and this Court;

(b) Pursue with extraordinary diligence the evidentiary leads relating to

Maj. Darwin Sy and the Toyota Revo vehicle with Plate No. XRR 428; and

(c) Prepare, with the assistance of petitioners and/or witnesses,

cartographic sketches of respondents Maj. Sy/Reyes, Jimmy Santana,
Ruben Alfaro, Capt. Angelo Cuaresma, and a certain Jonathan to aid
inpositively identifying and locating them.The investigations shall be
completed not later than six (6) months from receipt of the Decision; and
within thirty (30) days after completion of the investigations, the Chief of
Staff of the AFP and the Director-General of the PNP are likewise directed
to submit a full report of the results of the investigations to the Court, the
CA,the OMB, and petitioners.

The Supreme Court accordingly referred the case back to the CA for the
purpose of monitoring theinvestigations and the actions of the AFP and the
PNP.