GR L 547; (June, 1949) (CRITIQUE)
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THE AI-ASSISTED CRITIQUE
The Court’s reasoning in People v. De Castro correctly acquits on the treason charge but falters in its ancillary analysis of the sexual offense. The core holding that mere membership in the occupation’s constabulary and the act of escorting a woman do not satisfy the two-witness rule or manifest adherence to the enemy required for treason is legally sound. However, the obiter dictum regarding the absence of rape is analytically problematic and gratuitous. By invoking outdated commentary and a case focusing on victim hesitation, the Court improperly applied a substantive criminal law standard to facts not formally before it, venturing beyond the necessary scope of the appeal and risking the perpetuation of harmful myths about sexual violence under coercion.

The separate concurrence by Justice Perfecto adopts a more prudent judicial posture, correctly noting that any discussion of rape is unnecessary as it was not charged. This highlights the main opinion’s overreach. The Court’s primary duty was to assess the sufficiency of the treason evidence, which it properly found lacking. Its foray into analyzing the victim’s consent under threat of death—a scenario the narrative frames as yielding out of fear of “brutality”—was an advisory opinion on a hypothetical criminal liability. This creates an unfortunate and non-binding precedent that could be misconstrued in future cases involving duress, contradicting the principle that consent vitiated by threats of violence is no consent at all.

Ultimately, the decision is a correct application of treason doctrine but a poor example of judicial restraint. The Court should have limited its reversal to the insufficiency of the treasonous acts, adhering to the maxim expressio unius est exclusio alterius—the charge defined the scope of the judgment. By opining on the sexual offense, the Court engaged in unnecessary fact-finding on a non-issue, undermining the clarity of an otherwise straightforward acquittal based on the prosecution’s failure to prove an overt act betraying allegiance to the Philippines.