Republic of the Philippines
SUPREME COURT
Manila
EN BANC
G.R. No. L-6080 December 29, 1953
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, plaintiff-appellant,
vs.
AGRIPINA MAGAT DE SORIANO and RODRIGO MIRANDA, defendants-appellees.
First Assistant Solicitor General Ruperto Kapunan, Jr. and Solicitor Florencio Villamor for appellant.
Pedro P. Colina and Jose C. de Vega for appellees.
BENGZON, J.:
Double jeopardy is the issue in this appeal coming from the Court of First Instance of Rizal.
Tried for theft and acquitted for insufficiency of evidence, the defendants were subsequently booked for estafa under an information alleging that they,
. . . unlawfully and feloniously and with intent to defraud, thru false pretense, represented and made it appear that Agripina Magat de Soriano is the person of Paulina Belches Vda. de Orbina, the payee of U. S. Treasury Check No. 43,388.834, in the amount of $1,327.50, to the Municipal Treasurer of Makati, Rizal, and the latter because of such false pretense and representations and believing that it was true, cashed said check and paid the amount of P2,655 to the above-named accused, to the damage and prejudice of the real payee, Paulina Belches Vda. de Orbina in the said amount of P2,655.
Before the arraignment defendants moved to quash the prosecution, pointing to their former acquittal and arguing they had already been jeopardy of punishment for the same offense, the previous information for theft having asserted that they,
. . . willfully, unlawfully and feloniously, with intent of gain and without the consent and knowledge of the owner thereof, take, steal and carry away one (1) U. S. Treasury Check No. 43,388,834 payable to the order of Paulina Belches Vda. de Orbina in the amount of $1,327.50, to the damage and prejudice of said Paulina Belches, the owner thereof, in the sum of P1,327.50 or P2,655, Philippine currency, the said accused having succeeded to cash the said check and collected and received the aforesaid amount.1awphil.net
The court denied the motion; but upon the petition to reconsider, it dismissed the proceedings, holding that since "both informations have identical facts and they involved the same persons and the same amount of money, there is (double) jeopardy in this case."
The fiscal appealed.
For the purpose of determining whether the second prosecution would place the defendants in a second jeopardy, the point to consider is whether under the information for theft they could have been convicted of the estafa described in the second information. Well-known, of course, is the rule that the offense charged is not the name given to it by the fiscal, but that described by the facts alleged in the information.
The crucial allegations of the estafa charge, besides the collection of the money, were these:
. . . thru false pretense, represented and made it appear that Agripina Magat de Soriano is . . . Paulina Belches Vda. de Orbina . . . to the Municipal Treasurer . . . and the latter because of such false pretense . . . cashed said check . . . .
Such allegations of false pretense and representations were totally lacking in the first information. It is true such first information said "the accused having succeeded to cash the said check and collected the amount", and it might be contended that this impliedly alleged the same false representations included in the second information. However, such theory would tolerate implied allegations in a criminal information, to the utter disadvantage of the accused whose constitutional right to be informed of the nature of the accusation might thereby the undermined. Besides, such allegation (of false representations) is not necessarily deducible from the fact that, being payable to another person, the check was paid to these accused, the reason being that the treasurer might have acted with full knowledge of facts, without having been misled, even thru connivance with the said accused.
The appellee maintains that the offense described in the information for estafa is the same crime proved at the trial for theft. But the test as to jeopardy is the crime alleged in the information — not the crime proved thereafter. The accused could not be convicted of such proved crime if it was not sufficiently described in the information. They were not therefore in danger of being punished for such proved crime.
From the foregoing it follows the trial judge erred in dismissing the second information.
Judgment reversed. The record will have to be returned for further proceedings. So ordered.
Paras, C.J., Pablo, Padilla, Tuason, Reyes, Jugo, Bautista Angelo and Labrador, JJ., concur.
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