On February 23, 1989, the tanodbayan referred the complaint to the City Fiscal of Butuan City who subpoenaed Governor Paredes. However, the subpoena was served on, and received by, the Station Commander of San Francisco, Agusan del Sur, who did not serve it on Paredes. Despite the absence of notice to Paredes, Deputized Tanodbayan/City Fiscal Ernesto M. Brocoy conducted a preliminary investigation ex-parte. He recommended that an information be filed in court. His recommendation was approved by the Tanodbayan who, on August 10, 1989, filed the following information in the Sandiganbayan where it was docketed as TBP Case No. 86-03368:

That on or about January 21, 1976, or sometime prior or subsequent thereto, in San Francisco, Agusan del Sur, Philippines, and within the jurisdiction of this Honorable Court, the above-named accused, a public officer, being then the Provincial Attorney of Agusan del Sur, having been duly appointed and qualified as such, taking advantage of his public position, did, then and there, wilfully and unlawfully persuade, influence and induce the Land Inspector of the Bureau of Lands, by the name of Armando L. Luison to violate an existing rule or regulation duly promulgated by competent authority by misrepresenting to the latter that the land subject of an application filed by the accused with the Bureau of Lands is disposable by a free patent when the accused well knew that the said land had already been reserved for a school site, thus by the accused's personal misrepresentation in his capacity as Provincial Attorney of Agusan del Sur and applicant for a free patent, a report favorably recommending the issuance of a free patent was given by the said Armando L. Luison, land inspector, thereby paving the way to the release of a decree of title, by the Register of Deeds of Agusan del Sur, an act committed by the accused, in outright prejudice of the public interest. (pp. 3-4, Rollo.)

1. he is charged for an offense which has prescribed:

2. the preliminary investigation, as well as the Information prepared by the Tanodbayan and the Warrant of Arrest issued by the Sandiganbayan were invalid for lack of notice to him of the preliminary investigation conducted by Deputized Tanodbayan Ernesto M. Brocoy and Tanodbayan Prosecutor Josephine Z. Fernandez; and

3. his constitutional right to due process had been violated by the long delay in the termination of the preliminary investigation.

The crime charged is alleged to have been committed "on or about January 21, 1976" when the accused allegedly misrepresented to a Lands Inspector of the Bureau of Lands that the land subject of the herein movant's Application for a Free Patent was disposable land. This misrepresentation allegedly resulted in the issuance of a Torrens Title under a Free Patent to the herein accused-movant. This, the Information avers, was prejudicial to the public interest because the land in question had been reserved for a school site and was, therefore, not disposable.

Thus, the charge is for the violation of Sec. 3(a) of R.A. No. 3019 because the accused had allegedly persuaded, induced and influenced the Public Lands Inspector to violate existing law, rules and regulations by recommending approval of the free patent application.

The accused asserts that since at the time of the alleged commission of the crime (January 21, 1976) the period of prescription was ten (10) years under Sec. 11 of R.A. No. 3019, the crime should have prescribed in 1986. The prosecution seems to agree with the movant's statement as to the term of the prescriptive period with the qualification that the period of prescription should have commenced to run from March 28, 1985, when the complaint was allegedly filed by the Republic for the cancellation of the title.

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The question then is this: when should the period of prescription have commenced to run as to the alleged misrepresentation which persuaded, influenced and induced the Lands Inspector of the Bureau of Lands resulting in the approval of the application of the accused for a free patent?

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The Supreme Court has clearly stated that even in the case of falsification of public documents, prescription commences from its recording with the Registry of Deeds when the existence of the document and the averments therein theoretically become a matter of public knowledge.

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The matter of improper inducement, persuasion or influence upon the Lands Inspector allegedly applied by the accused through his misrepresentation may have been unknown to others besides the two of them because their interaction would presumably have been private. The fact of the improper segregation of the piece of land in question and the grant thereof to the accused, however, became, presumptively at least, a matter of public knowledge upon the issuance of a Torrens Title over that parcel of non-disposable public land.

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4. Notice to the whole world must be presumed at the very latest on May 28, 1976 when the Register of Deeds of Agusan del Sur issued Original Certificate of Title No. 8379 in the name of the accused as a result of the grant of the patent on the school site reservation;

5. The act of filing the approved free patent with the Registry of Deeds is notice duly given to the various offices and officials of the government, e.g., the Department (Ministry) of Agriculture and the Bureau of Lands, who are affected thereby specially because it is the Bureau of Lands which files the approved patent application with the Registry of Deeds. If the land in question was indeed reserved for as school site, then the Department (Ministry) of Education would also know or would be presumed to know. (pp. 28-33, Rollo.)

It would seriously strain credulity to say that while the violation of law, rules or regulation by the Lands Inspector was obvious and public (since the school site had been titled in the name of the alleged inducer Pimentel **), the beneficiary thereof could not have been suspected of having induced the violation itself. It would be grossly unfair and unjust to say that prescription would run in favor of the Lands Inspector who had actually violated the law but not to the public official who had benefitted therefrom and who may have, therefore, instigated the favorable recommendation for the disposition of non-disposable land.

In view of all the foregoing, the Motion to Quash the Information is granted. (p. 36, Rollo.)

Sec. 2. Prescription shall begin to run from the day of the commission of the violation of the law, and if the same be not known at the time, from the discovery thereof and the institution of judicial proceedings for its investigation and punishment.

The prescription shall be interrupted when proceedings are instituted against the guilty person, and shall begin to run again if the proceedings are dismissed for reasons not constituting jeopardy.

Statutes of Limitation are construed as being acts of grace, and as a surrendering by the sovereign of its right to prosecute or of its right to prosecute at its discretion, and they are considered as equivalent to acts of amnesty. Such statutes are founded on the liberal theory that prosecutions should not be allowed to ferment endlessly in the files of the government to explode only after witnesses and proofs necessary to the protection of accused have by sheer lapse of time passed beyond availability. They serve, not only to bar prosecutions on aged and untrustworthy evidence, but also to cut off prosecution for crimes a reasonable time after completion, when no further danger to society is contemplated from the criminal activity. (22 CJS 573-574.)

In the absence of a special provision otherwise, the statute of limitations begins to run on the commission of an offense and not from the time when the offense is discovered or when the offender becomes known, or it normally begins to run when the crime is complete. (22 CJS 585; Emphasis supplied.)

Protection from prosecution under a statute of limitation is a substantive right. Where the statute fixes a period of limitation as to a prosecution for a particular offense, the limitation so fixed is jurisdictional, and the time within which the offense is committed is a jurisdictional fact, it being necessary that the indictment or information be actually filed within the time prescribed. (22 CJS 574.)

Fact that the statute of limitations is jurisdictional necessarily determined that a prosecution within the period specified is an essential element of the offense. (People vs. Allen, 118 P 2d, 927, Emphasis supplied.)

Unless statutes of limitation are clearly retrospective in their terms, they do not apply to crimes previously committed (22 CJS 576; People vs. Lurd, 12 Hun 282; Martine vs. State, 24 Tex 61; Emphasis ours.)

A law passed after the occurrence of a fact or commission of an act, which retrospectively changes the legal consequences or relations of such fact or deed. By Art. I, Sec. 10 of U.S. Const., the states are forbidden to pass "any ex post facto law". Most all state constitutions contain similar prohibitions against ex post facto laws.

An "ex post facto law" is defined as a law which provides for the infliction of punishment upon a person for an act done which, when it was committed, was innocent; a law which aggravates a crime or makes it greater than when it was committed; a law that changes the punishment or inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when it was committed; a law that changes the rules of evidence and receives less or different testimony than was required at the time of the commission of the offense in order to convict the offender; a law which, assuming to regulate civil rights and remedies only, in effect imposes a penalty or the deprivation of a right which, when done, was lawful; a law which deprives persons accused of crime of some lawful protection to which they have become entitled, such as the protection of a former conviction or acquittal, or of the proclamation of amnesty; every law which, in relation to the offense or its consequences, alters the situation of a person to his disadvantage. Wilensky v. Fields, Fla., 267 So. 2d 1, 5. (Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, p. 520.)