G.R. No. L-27537-44; October 31, 1969
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, plaintiff-appellant, vs. MELCHOR GARCIA SY, defendant-appellee.

FACTS

The appellee, Melchor Garcia Sy, then municipal treasurer of Tandag, Surigao del Sur, was initially charged in a single information (Criminal Case 1748) with malversation through falsification of public documents, allegedly conspiring with Mayor Macario Cagalawan and Councilor Antiaco Dumagan. The information covered multiple acts from November 16, 1953, to December 6, 1954, involving P16,499.50. The accused moved to quash the information on grounds of duplicity (charging more than one offense), but the trial court (Judge Modesto R. Remolete) denied the motion. After trial, all three were convicted and sentenced. Cagalawan and Dumagan appealed to the Court of Appeals, which, on May 28, 1958, found the information duplicitous and remanded the case with instructions to file separate informations for each act of malversation. They were subsequently retried on eight separate informations and acquitted on December 23, 1959.
Garcia Sy also appealed. Following its earlier resolution, the Court of Appeals ordered on March 8, 1963, the remand of his case with similar instructions. Accordingly, eight separate informations for malversation (Criminal Cases 358-365) were filed against him. Garcia Sy moved to quash these new informations, arguing double jeopardy. The trial court (Judge Placido Reyes-Roa), in its order of August 26, 1966, granted the motion to quash, applying the “same-evidence test” and concluding that the new prosecutions placed him in double jeopardy. The State appealed this order.

ISSUE

Whether the filing of eight separate informations for malversation against Melchor Garcia Sy, after the Court of Appeals set aside his initial conviction due to a duplicitous information, constitutes double jeopardy.

RULING

No, the filing of separate informations does not place the appellee in double jeopardy. The trial court’s order quashing the eight informations is annulled and set aside, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings.
The Supreme Court held that the appellee was not placed in jeopardy because his initial conviction was not final—he had appealed it, thereby preventing it from becoming final. Thus, there was no valid conviction or acquittal to serve as a basis for double jeopardy. The Court emphasized that the appellee, by appealing and reiterating his objection to the duplicitous information, is estopped from invoking double jeopardy. The doctrines of waiver and estoppel apply because the dismissal of the original case (on the technical ground of duplicity) was sought by the accused himself. As stated in People v. Obsania, when a dismissal is induced by the defendant and is not on the merits, he is barred from later claiming double jeopardy. The trial court erred in treating the new informations as separate prosecutions for the same offenses; they were merely a correction of the procedural defect in the original single information. The Court also noted that the acquittal of the alleged co-conspirators (Cagalawan and Dumagan) is not a legal ground to quash the informations against Garcia Sy, as the factual basis for their acquittal was not before the Court.