SC asked: Acquit Rappler CEO, staffer of cyberlibel
The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) has asked the Supreme Court to clear Rappler CEO and executive editor Maria Ressa and a former staffer of cyberlibel charges, as the case against them was filed beyond the one-year prescription period.
In a statement on Tuesday, the OSG headed by Darlene Berberabe said that it filed a manifestation and motion with the high tribunal on March 9 which it noted was “grounded in law and duty.”
The state lawyer noted that the cyberlibel complaint against Ressa and former researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. was filed only in 2019 even though the May 2012 Rappler story, the subject of the case, was updated and re-uploaded in 2014.
The story, “CJ using SUVs of ‘controversial’ businessman,” written by Santos claimed that businessman Wilfredo Keng lent his sport utility vehicles (SUVs) to then Chief Justice Renato Corona.
Under surveillance
The same article also cited an intelligence report that claimed Keng had been under surveillance by the National Security Council for his alleged involvement in human trafficking and drug smuggling.
Keng filed a cyberlibel complaint with the National Bureau of Investigation against Ressa and Santos in 2017 or five years after the article was first posted and three years after it was supposedly reposted due to a typographical error.
The libel complaint was initially dismissed in 2018, but the NBI reversed the decision and recommended to the Department of Justice that Ressa and Santos be prosecuted.
Ressa initially argued that she could not be accused of cyberlibel because the cybercrime law was not yet in effect when the story was published in May 2012. The Cybercrime Law was approved on Sept. 12, 2012, and took effect only on Oct. 3, 2012—or 15 days after the law was published as required by law. The law took effect more than four months after the story was published.
Lower court conviction
In 2020, the Manila Regional Trial Court found Ressa and Santos guilty of cyberlibel, sentencing them to up to six years in prison.
The ruling was affirmed two years later by the Court of Appeals which even added eight months to the pair’s prison sentence
The complaints against Rappler were filed at the height of reports that criticized then President Rodrigo Duterte for the extrajudicial killings happening under his brutal drug war.
“Prescription is the legal time limit within which a criminal information must be filed. Once that period lapses, the State can no longer prosecute. The rule promotes diligence in prosecution and protects individuals from the inequity of defending against stale charges and the threat of perpetual prosecution,” the OSG said.
It asked the Supreme Court to apply to the Ressa case its decision on another cyberlibel case involving disbarred lawyer Berteni Causing, who served as the spokesperson of the Mabasa family in connection with the 2022 assassination of broadcaster Percival “Percy Lapid” Mabasa.
The OSG noted that in the 2023 ruling on Causing’s cyberlibel case, the high tribunal reduced the prescription for cyberlibel offenses to one year, instead of 12 years.
“Applying this doctrine, the filing of the criminal information against Ressa and Santos in early 2019 for the article republished in 2014 and discovered by the complainant in 2016 is time-barred,” it said.
In urging the acquittal of Ressa and Santos, the OSG also noted that its duty as the government’s legal representative is not limited to going after convictions, but also acquittals.
“It includes assisting the courts in arriving at a just and legally correct disposition, grounded on the Constitution, statutes, and controlling jurisprudence even, and especially, when the law requires acquittal,” it said. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
