Digest by Clarisse P. Marquez
Graphics by Roemma Kara G. Palo
FACTS: General Fabian Ver ordered various intelligence units of the Armed Forces of the Philippines “to conduct pre-emptive strikes against known communist-terrorist (CT) underground houses in view of increasing reports about CT plans to sow disturbances in Metro Manila.โ During these raids, plaintiffs were arrested without proper warrants issued by the courts.The military men who interrogated them employed threats, torture methods, and other forms of violence in order to obtain incriminating information or confessions and to punish them. All violations of plaintiffsโ constitutional rights were part of a concerted and deliberate plan to forcibly extract information and incriminatory statements from plaintiffs and to terrorize, harass and punish them. The respondents postulate the view that as public officers they are covered by the mantle of state immunity from suit for acts done in the performance of official duties.
ISSUE: Whether or not the respondentsโ acts are covered under the mantle of immunity.
RULING: No. No man may seek to violate those sacred rights with impunity. In times of great upheaval or of social and political stress, when the temptation is strongest to yield to the law of force rather than the force of law, it is necessary to remind ourselves that certain basic rights and liberties are immutable and cannot be sacrificed to the transient needs or imperious demands of the ruling power. The rule of law must prevail, or else liberty will perish. Our commitment to democratic principles and to the rule of law compels us to reject the view which reduces law to nothing but the expression of the will of the predominant power in the community. Democracy cannot be a reign of progress, of liberty, of justice, unless the law is respected by him who makes it and by him for whom it is made. Now this respect implies a maximum of faith, a minimum of Idealism. Ongoing to the bottom of the matter, we discover that life demands of us a certain residuum of sentiment which is not derived from reason, but which reason nevertheless controls.
THE BARRISTER 