THE Court of Appeals (CA) has junked the petition of Nobel laureate and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa and former Rappler reporter Reynaldo Santos Jr. to reverse its July 2022 decision, which upheld their cyber libel conviction by the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Manila City two years ago.
In a 16-page resolution issued on Monday, October 10, and penned by Associate Justice Roberto Quiroz, the appellate court’s Fourth Division held that the accused-appellants failed to raise new arguments that would warrant the reversal of its decision.
“A careful and meticulous review of the motion for reconsideration reveals that the matter raised by the accused-appellants had already been exhaustively resolved and discussed in the Assailed Decision,” the resolution read. Associate Justices Ramon Bato Jr. and Germano Francisco Legaspi concurred with the ruling.
The CA also assured the public that Ressa and Santos’ conviction is not geared toward the curtailment of the freedom of speech, or to produce a chilling effect that would hinder free speech.
“On the contrary, we echo the wisdom of the SC [Supreme Court] in the Disini case that the purpose of the law is to safeguard the right of free speech, and to curb, it not totally prevent, the reckless and unlawful use of the computer systems as a means of committing the traditional criminal offenses,” the CA said.
In seeking the reversal of the CA’s decision, Ressa and Santos argued that it erred in holding that cyber libel has not prescribed and that the prescription period for the said offense is 15 years.
They also insisted that actual malice was not proven beyond reasonable doubt, which should warrant their exoneration.
Further, Ressa argued that the CA erred in holding her liable simply based on the prosecution’s allegation that she was the CEO and executive editor of Rappler.
The case stemmed from an article written by Santos in May 2012, claiming that businessman Wilfredo Keng allegedly lent his sports utility vehicle to then Chief Justice Renato Corona.
Apart from this, the story also cited an intelligence report that said Keng had been under surveillance by the National Security Council for alleged involvement in human trafficking and drug smuggling.
Keng has denied all the allegations and decided to file a complaint with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Cybercrime Division in October 2017, which eventually led to the filing of the case before the court.
The Office of the Solicitor General has opposed the motion for reconsideration of the accused-appellants, saying that the matters raised by Ressa and Santos were “merely rehashed from their Brief.”
The CA held that the accused-appellants’ argument that the provisions on cyber libel and its penalty were applied ex post facto were “unavailing.”
“In the same manner, the argument that the provisions on cyber libel and its penalty were applied ex post facto on the theory that the correction of one letter in the original article published on May 29, 2012 is too unsubstantial and cannot be considered as a republication committed on February 19, 2014, is unavailing,” the CA said.
It stressed that the determination of republication is not hinged on whether the corrections made were substantial or not, “as what matters is that the very exact libelous article was again published on a later date.”
“Such republication on February 19, 2014 is the act which accused-appellants were charged for, and was lawfully prosecuted when the provision on cyber libel was declared valid and constitutional by the Supreme Court through its decision in the Disini case dated February 11, 2014,” the CA said.
The appellate court also branded as “misplaced” the arguments of accused-appellants that the SC ruling in Wilfredo Tolentino vs People which settled that the prescriptive period for the crime of cyber libel is 15 years has no doctrinal value and cannot be considered as a binding precedent as it was an unsigned resolution.
“While the Internal Rules of the Supreme Court defined an unsigned resolution as a ruling that is essentially meaningful only to the parties, has no significant doctrinal value or is minimal interest to the law profession, the academe or the public, nowhere was it stated that an unsigned resolution has no doctrinal value, or that it cannot be considered as a binding precedent,” the appellate court said.
Likewise, it said even an unsigned resolution was still issued by the authority of the justices, and is still a definitive determination of a question of law raised before it.
In further justifying a longer prescriptive period for cyberlibel (15 years versus one year for libel), the appellate court noted the “stark distinction” between traditional and online media.
The court said that an online article “remains in perpetuity unless taken down from all online platforms.”
In its June 2020 ruling, Manila RTC Branch 46 Presiding Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa held that the failure of the defense to present Ressa and Santos to refute the charge against them was a big blow to their case.
Judge Montesa said Santos and Ressa are both in the best position to testify that the article was published with good motives and justifiable ends.
The judge also noted that despite Keng’s plea to publish a clarificatory article or air his side of the story the accused did not heed this.
Image credits: Ramon FVelasquez via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 unported