GR L 4772; (November, 1908) (Digest)
G.R. No. L-4772
THE UNITED STATES, plaintiff-appellee, vs. TAN TAYCO AND CO SENCHO, defendants-appellants.
November 21, 1908
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FACTS:
Appellants Tan Tayco and Co Sencho were convicted of violating Section 9 of the Opium Law (Act No. 1761) and sentenced to a fine of P500 each, with subsidiary imprisonment. The information charged them with willfully failing to deliver two cans of opium to a government official on November 30, 1907. However, it was neither alleged in the complaint nor found as a fact by the trial court that the opium found in their possession on November 30, 1907, had been in their possession at the time the Opium Law went into effect (October 17, 1907) or within ten days thereafter. The record also showed no evidence to support such a finding.
Section 9 of Act No. 1761 required every person having opium in their possession (with specified exceptions) to deliver it to the provincial treasurer or Collector of Internal Revenue within ten days after the Act went into effect, providing penalties for failure to do so.
ISSUE:
Whether the provisions of Section 9 of the Opium Law (Act No. 1761) are applicable to persons who came into possession of opium after the expiration of ten days from the date the Act went into effect.
RULING:
No. The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of conviction.
The Court held that the provisions of Section 9 of the Opium Law are not applicable after the expiration of ten days from the date the Act went into effect. The object of Section 9 was to provide a means for persons who lawfully possessed opium prior to the Act’s effective date to dispose of it and deposit it with the proper government officials, thereby avoiding an unjust confiscation of their property under the new law, which otherwise penalized opium possession (Section 7).
By its terms, Section 9 clearly applied only to cases where individuals failed to deliver opium within the initial ten days after the law took effect (i.e., by October 27, 1907). A person could not comply with its requirements unless they were actually in possession of opium within that initial ten-day period. Therefore, someone who came into possession of opium, lawfully or unlawfully, after the expiration of those ten days could not comply with Section 9, and the penalties prescribed for its violation would not apply to them.
Since it was not proven that the appellants possessed the opium within the period from October 17 to October 27, 1907, Section 9 did not apply to their alleged failure to deliver opium on November 30, 1907.