THE FINAL tax case filed by the Duterte government against journalist Maria Ressa has been dismissed by the Court of Tax Appeals.
The CTA denied the petition filed by the Solicitor General that prayed to reverse the decision rendered by the Pasig Regional Trial Court clearing Ressa and her online publication Rappler on charges of tax evasion and deficient tax payments.
Government was allowed a full presentation of evidence during trial. No gross error could be attributed to the trial judge who assessed the evidence in her best lights.
***
As far as we know Ressa’s petition to reverse her conviction for a libel charge that was filed during the Duterte administration in early 2018 is yet to be decided.
The offending article was published on Rappler in 2018. One of the defenses offered is that the crime had prescribed – meaning that the State could no longer prosecute it due to the passage of time. Libel normally prescribes in one year.
The Court of Appeals upheld Ressa’s conviction. The cybercrime law prescribes a longer prison sentence for cyber libel. It is punished with an afflictive penalty. The prescriptive period for cyber-libel is thus purportedly fifteen years.
***
The courts ignored legal opinions that libel does not follow ordinary prescriptive periods under the penal code. Libel is given special treatment. Legislators saw fit to create an exception, thus Republic Act 4661 was enacted to decrease that period to one year.
RA 4661 was never repealed. We share the opinion that, not having been expressly repealed by the cybercrime act, the prosecution must abide by the special prescriptive period for libel cases.
***
In a case decided in October last year (Causing vs. People) the Supreme Court said that cyber libel is the same crime of libel under the revised penal code even though it is committed through the use of a computer system.
The High Court said that lawmakers are presumed to know all laws bearing on Libel, including the applicable penal code provisions on the period for its prescription. Had it been the intention of the legislature to exclude Cyber Libel from the prescriptive period for libel in the penal code, it would have used the appropriate language to do so. But it did not.
***
The Supreme Court said that the Legislature clearly did not intend to create a prescriptive period for Cyber Libel that is different from what is already provided by law. The one-year period continues.
This Causing decision is the harbinger of Ressa’s absolution from libel.
A survey of recent judicial pronouncements on libel shows the court resolving doubts in favor of the accused.
***
Journalists have urged President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to table the decriminalization of libel as a priority measure as he delivers his state of the nation address.
The truly aggrieved do have a recourse through civil actions for damages against people who are impelled with malice. In the meantime, libel as a criminal act should not continue to hang as a threat over the right of the people to be informed./PN
