GR L 47131; (July, 1990) (Digest)
G.R. No. L-47131. July 3, 1990. PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, petitioner, vs. HON. MARIANO CASTAÑEDA, Judge of the Court of First Instance of Pampanga (Br. III), and GERONIMO KABIGTING, respondents.
FACTS
Respondent Geronimo Kabigting, as president of a parish council, solicited and received funds for church construction from July 4, 1971, to April 1973, without securing the required permit from the Director of Public Welfare under Act No. 4075. A criminal complaint for this violation was filed against him on August 23, 1976. Kabigting moved to dismiss, arguing the offense had prescribed, as more than four years had elapsed from his first act of solicitation in 1971 to the filing of the complaint in 1976. The municipal court denied his motion.
Kabigting then successfully petitioned the Court of First Instance for a writ of certiorari, which annulled the municipal court’s orders and directed the dismissal of the case on the ground of prescription. The People appealed, contending that each act of solicitation constituted a separate offense, and thus, solicitations made within the four-year prescriptive period prior to the filing of the complaint were not time-barred.
ISSUE
Whether the multiple acts of solicitation without a permit constitute separate offenses or a single continuing offense for the purpose of computing the prescriptive period.
RULING
The Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Court of First Instance and reinstated the municipal court’s orders. The Court held that the offense under Act No. 4075 is a single, continuing crime. The law’s essential elements are (1) soliciting or receiving contributions for charitable or public welfare purposes, and (2) the omission to secure a prior permit. The permit, once obtained, authorizes multiple solicitations from numerous donors. The legislative intent was not to punish each individual act of solicitation as a separate crime, a conclusion supported by the statute’s classification of the violation as a mere misdemeanor and the principle of construing penal laws in favor of the accused.
Consequently, all solicitations or acceptances of donations made over a period without the requisite permit constitute one continuing offense. The prescriptive period of four years, therefore, must be computed from the date of the latest act of solicitation, not from the first. Since Kabigting’s last solicitation occurred in April 1973, the complaint filed in August 1976 was well within the prescriptive period. The Court found the reasoning in the analogous case of People v. Sabbun persuasive, where periodic acts violating a special law were similarly deemed a single continuing offense.