Republic of the Philippines
SUPREME COURT
Manila
SUPREME COURT
Manila
EN BANC
G.R. No. L-5887 December 16, 1910
THE UNITED STATES, plaintiff-appellee,
vs.
LOOK CHAW (alias LUK CHIU), defendant-appellant.
vs.
LOOK CHAW (alias LUK CHIU), defendant-appellant.
Thos. D. Aitken for appellant.
Attorney-General Villamor for appellee.
Attorney-General Villamor for appellee.
ARELLANO, C. J.:
The first complaint filed against the
defendant, in the Court of
First Instance of Cebu, stated that he "carried, kept, possessed and had in his possession
and control, 96 kilogrammes of opium," and that "he had been
surprised in the act of selling 1,000 pesos worth prepared opium."
The defense presented a demurrer based on
two grounds, the second of which was the more than one crime was charged in the
complaint. The demurrer was sustained, as the court found that the complaint
contained two charges,
one, for the unlawful possession of opium, and the other, for the unlawful sale
of opium, and, consequence of that ruling, it ordered that the fiscal
should separated one charge from the other and file a complaint for each
violation; this, the fiscal did, and this cause concerns only the unlawful
possession of opium. It is registered as No. 375, in the Court of First
Instance of Cebu, and as No. 5887 on the general docket of this court.
The facts of the case are contained in the
following finding of the trial court:
The evidence, it says, shows that between
11 and 12 o'clock a. m. on the present month (stated as August 19, 1909),
several persons, among them Messrs. Jacks and Milliron, chief of the department
of the port of Cebu and internal-revenue agent of Cebu, respectively, went
abroad the steamship Erroll
to inspect and search
its cargo, and found, first in a cabin near the saloon, one sack (Exhibit A) and
afterwards in the hold,
another sack (Exhibit B). The sack referred to as Exhibit A contained 49 cans of opium, and the
other, Exhibit B, the larger
sack, also contained several cans of the same substance. The hold, in
which the sack mentioned in Exhibit B was found, was under the defendant's
control, who moreover, freely and of his own will and accord admitted that this sack,
as well as the other referred to in Exhibit B and found in the cabin, belonged
to him. The said defendant
also stated, freely and voluntarily, that he had bought these sacks of opium,
in Hongkong with the intention of selling them as contraband in Mexico or Vera
Cruz, and that, as his hold had already been searched several times for opium,
he ordered two other Chinamen to keep the sack. Exhibit A.
It is to be taken into account that the
two sacks of opium, designated as Exhibits A and B, properly constitute the corpus delicti.
Moreover, another lot of
four cans of opium, marked, as Exhibit C, was the subject matter of
investigation at the trial, and with respect to which the chief of the
department of the port of Cebu testified that they were found in the part of the ship where the
firemen habitually sleep, and that they were delivered to the first
officer of the ship to be returned to the said firemen after the vessel should
have left the Philippines, because the firemen and crew of foreign vessels, pursuant to the
instructions he had from the Manila custom-house, were permitted to retain
certain amounts of opium, always provided it should not be taken shore.
And, finally, another can of opium, marked
"Exhibit D," is also corpus delicti and important as evidence
in this cause. With regard to this the internal-revenue agent testified as
follows:itc-alf
FISCAL. What is it?
WITNESS. It is a can opium which was
bought from the defendant by a secret-service agent and taken to the office of
the governor to prove that the accused had opium in his possession to sell.
On motion by the defense, the court ruled
that this answer might be stricken out "because it refers to a sale."
But, with respect to this answer, the chief of the department of customs had
already given this testimony, to wit:
FISCAL. Who asked you to search the
vessel?
WITNESS. The internal-revenue agent came
to my office and said that a party brought him a sample of opium and that the
same party knew that there was more opium on board the steamer, and the agent
asked that the vessel be searched.
The defense moved that this testimony be
rejected, on the ground of its being hearsay evidence, and the court only
ordered that the part thereof "that there was more opium, on board the
vessel" be stricken out.
The defense, to abbreviate proceedings,
admitted that the receptacles mentioned as Exhibits A, B, and C, contained
opium and were found on board the steamship Erroll, a vessel of English
nationality, and that it was true that the defendant stated that these sacks of
opium were his and that he had them in his possession.
According to the testimony of the
internal-revenue agent, the defendant stated to him, in the presence of the
provincial fiscal, of a Chinese interpreter (who afterwards was not needed,
because the defendant spoke English), the warden of the jail, and four guards,
that the opium seized in the vessel had been bought by him in Hongkong, at
three pesos for each round can and five pesos for each one of the others, for
the purpose of selling it, as contraband, in Mexico and Puerto de Vera Cruz;
that on the 15th the vessel arrived at Cebu, and on the same day he sold opium;
that he had tried to sell opium for P16 a can; that he had a contract to sell
an amount of the value of about P500; that the opium found in the room of the
other two Chinamen prosecuted in another cause, was his, and that he had left
it in their stateroom to avoid its being found in his room, which had already
been searched many times; and that, according to the defendant, the contents of
the large sack was 80 cans of opium, and of the small one, 49, and the total
number, 129.
It was established that the steamship Erroll was of
English nationality, that it came from Hongkong, and that it was bound for
Mexico, via the call ports of Manila and Cebu.
The defense moved for a dismissal of the
case, on the grounds that the court had no jurisdiction to try the same and the
facts concerned therein did not constitute a crime. The fiscal, at the conclusion
of his argument, asked that the maximum penalty of the law be imposed upon the
defendant, in view of the considerable amount of opium seized. The court ruled that it did not
lack jurisdiction, inasmuch as the crime had been committed within its district,
on the wharf of Cebu.
The court sentenced the defendant to five years' imprisonment, to pay a
fine of P10,000, with additional subsidiary imprisonment in case of insolvency,
though not to exceed one third of the principal penalty, and to the payment of
the costs. It further ordered the confiscation, in favor of the Insular
Government, of the exhibits presented in the case, and
that, in the event of an appeal being taken or a bond given, or when the
sentenced should have been served, the defendant be not released from custody,
but turned over to the customs authorities for the purpose of the fulfillment
of the existing laws on immigration.
From this judgment, the defendant appealed
to this court.
The appeal having been heard, together with
the allegations made therein by the parties, it is found: That, although the mere possession of
a thing of prohibited use in these Islands, aboard a foreign vessel in transit,
in any of their ports, does not, as a general rule, constitute a crime triable
by the courts of this country, on account of such vessel being considered as an
extension of its own nationality, the same rule does not apply when the
article, whose use is prohibited within the Philippine Islands, in the present
case a can of opium, is landed from the vessel upon Philippine soil, thus
committing an open violation of the laws of the land, with respect to which, as
it is a violation of the penal law in force at the place of the commission of
the crime, only the court established in that said place itself had competent
jurisdiction, in the absence of an agreement under an international treaty.
It is also found: That, even admitting
that the quantity of the drug seized, the subject matter of the present case,
was considerable, it does not appear that, on such account, the two penalties
fixed by the law on the subject, should be imposed in the maximum degree.
Therefore, reducing the imprisonment and the fine imposed to six
months and P1,000, respectively, we affirm in all other respects the judgment
appealed from, with the costs of this instance against the appellant. So
ordered.
Torres, Mapa, Johnson, Carson, Moreland
and Trent, JJ., concur.