Case Digest: JOSEPH VICTOR G. EJERCITO v. SANDIGANBAYAN 509 SCRA 190 (2006)

JOSEPH VICTOR G. EJERCITO v. SANDIGANBAYAN 509 SCRA 190 (2006)

Ms. Dela Paz, receiver of the Urban Bank, furnished the Office of the Ombudsman certified copies of manager checks detailed in the subpoena duces tecum. The Sandiganbayan granted the same. However, Ejercito claims that the subpoenas issued by the Sandiganbayan are invalid and may not be enforced because the information found therein, given their ―extremely detailed‖ character and could only have been obtained by the Special Prosecution Panel through an illegal disclosure by the bank officials. Ejercito thus contended that, following the ―fruit of the poisonous tree‖ doctrine, the subpoenas must be quashed. Moreover, the ―extremely-detailed‖ information obtained by the Ombudsman from the bank officials concerned during a previous investigation of the charges against him, such inquiry into his bank accounts would itself be illegal.

ISSUE:

Whether or not subpoena duces tecum/ad testificandum may be issued to order the production of statement of bank accounts even before a case for plunder is filed in court.

 
HELD:

The Supreme Court held that plunder is analogous to bribery, and therefore, the exception to R.A. 1405 must also apply to cases of plunder. The court also reiterated the ruling in Marquez v. Desierto that before an in camera inspection may be allowed there must be a pending case before a court of competent jurisdiction. Further, the account must be clearly identified, the inspection limited to the subject matter of pending case before the court of competent jurisdiction. As no plunder case against then President Estrada had yet been filed before a court of competent jurisdiction at the time the Ombudsman conducted an investigation, he concludes that the information about his bank accounts were acquired illegally, hence, it may not be lawfully used to facilitate a subsequent inquiry into the same bank accounts. Thus, his attempt to make the exclusionary rule applicable to the instant case fails. The high Court, however, rejected the arguments of the petitioner Ejercito that the bank accounts which where demanded from certain banks even before the case was filed before the proper court is inadmissible in evidence being fruits of poisonous tree. This is because the Ombudsman issued the subpoenas bearing on the bank accounts of Ejercito about four months before Marquez was promulgated on June 27, 2001. While judicial interpretations of statutes, such as that made in Marquez with respect to R.A. No. 6770 or the Ombudsman Act of 1989, are deemed part of the statute as of the date it was originally passed, the rule is not absolute. Thus, the Court referred to the teaching of Columbia Pictures Inc., v. Court of Appeals, that: It is consequently clear that a judicial interpretation becomes a part of the law as of the date that law was originally passed, subject only to the qualification that when a doctrine of this Court is overruled and a different view is adopted, and more so when there is a reversal thereof, the new doctrine should be applied prospectively and should not apply to parties who relied on the old doctrine and acted in good faith.