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Digest Leviste vs.
Digest Leviste vs.
189122
Petitioner,
THE COURT OF APPEALS
and PEOPLE OF THE
PHILIPPINES,
THE FACTS
Charged with the murder of Rafael de las Alas, petitioner Jose Antonio Leviste was
convicted by the Regional Trial Court of Makati City for the lesser crime of homicide and
sentenced to suffer an indeterminate penalty of six years and one day of prision mayor as
minimum to 12 years and one day of reclusion temporal as maximum.[11]
The Court of Appeals denied petitioner’s application for bail. [13] It invoked the bedrock
principle in the matter of bail pending appeal, that the discretion to extend bail during the
course of appeal should be exercised “with grave caution and only for strong reasons.”
Petitioner quotes Section 5, Rule 114 of the Rules of Court was present. Petitioner’s
theory is that, where the penalty imposed by the trial court is more than six years but not more
than 20 years and the circumstances mentioned in the third paragraph of Section 5 are
absent, bail must be granted to an appellant pending appeal.
THE ISSUE
Whether the discretionary nature of the grant of bail pending appeal mean that bail
should automatically be granted absent any of the circumstances mentioned in the third
paragraph of Section 5, Rule 114 of the Rules of Court?
RULING
We disagree.
Retired Court of Appeals Justice Oscar M. Herrera, another authority in remedial law,
is of the same thinking:
In the first situation, bail is a matter of sound judicial discretion. This means that, if
none of the circumstances mentioned in the third paragraph of Section 5, Rule 114 is present,
the appellate court has the discretion to grant or deny bail.
On the other hand, in the second situation, the appellate court exercises a more
stringent discretion, that is, to carefully ascertain whether any of the enumerated
circumstances in fact exists. If it so determines, it has no other option except to deny or
revoke bail pending appeal.
Given these two distinct scenarios, therefore, any application for bail pending appeal
should be viewed from the perspective of two stages: (1) the determination of discretion
stage, where the appellate court must determine whether any of the circumstances in the third
paragraph of Section 5, Rule 114 is present; this will establish whether or not the appellate
court will exercise sound discretion or stringent discretion in resolving the application for bail
pending appeal and (2) the exercise of discretion stage where, assuming the appellant’s case
falls within the first scenario allowing the exercise of sound discretion, the appellate court may
consider all relevant circumstances, other than those mentioned in the third paragraph of
Section 5, Rule 114, including the demands of equity and justice;[27] on the basis thereof, it
may either allow or disallow bail.
a finding that none of the said circumstances is present will not automatically
result in the grant of bail. Such finding will simply authorize the court to use the less
stringent sound discretion approach.
However, judicial discretion has been defined as “choice.”[28] Choice occurs where,
between “two alternatives or among a possibly infinite number (of options),” there is “more
than one possible outcome, with the selection of the outcome left to the decision
maker.”[29] On the other hand, the establishment of a clearly defined rule of action is the end of
discretion.[30] Thus, by severely clipping the appellate court’s discretion and relegating that
tribunal to a mere fact-finding body in applications for bail pending appeal in all instances
where the penalty imposed by the trial court on the appellant is imprisonment exceeding six
years, petitioner’s theory effectively renders nugatory the provision that “upon conviction by
the Regional Trial Court of an offense not punishable by death, reclusion perpetua, or life
imprisonment, admission to bail is discretionary.”
The aforementioned provisions were reproduced as Sections 3 to 6, Rule 114 of the 1964
Rules of Criminal Procedure and then of the 1985 Rules of Criminal Procedure. They were
modified in 1988 to read as follows:
Hence, for the guidelines of the bench and bar with respect to future
as well as pending cases before the trial courts, this Court en banc lays down
the following policies concerning theeffectivity of the bail of the accused, to
wit:
SEC. 13. All persons, except those charged with offenses punishable
by reclusion perpetua when evidence of guilt is strong, shall, before
conviction, be bailable by sufficient sureties, or be released on recognizance
as may be provided by law. x x x (emphasis supplied)
After conviction by the trial court, the presumption of innocence terminates and,
accordingly, the constitutional right to bail ends.[46] From then on, the grant of bail is subject to
judicial discretion. At the risk of being repetitious, such discretion must be exercised with
grave caution and only for strong reasons.