Vicente Serra v. Adriano Mortiga

• Decision Date: 25 February 1907
• Docket Number: No. 202,202
• Citation: 27 S.Ct. 343,51 L.Ed. 571,204 U.S. 470
• Parties: VICENTE SERRA and Maria Obleno, Plffs. in Err., v. ADRIANO MORTIGA
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

204 U.S. 470

27 S.Ct. 343

51 L.Ed. 571

VICENTE SERRA and Maria Obleno, Plffs. in Err.,

v ADRIANO MORTIGA.

No. 202.

Submitted February 1, 1907.

Decided February 25, 1907.

Messrs. Aldis B. Browne, Alexander Britton, and Maurice Kelly for plaintiffs in error.

No appearance for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice White delivered the opinion of the court:

Articles 433 and 434, found in chapter 1 of title 9 of the Penal Code of the Philippine Islands, define and punish the crime of adultery. The articles referred to are in the margin.¹

It is conceded at bar that, under the Philippine law, the offense of adultery, as defined by the articles in question, is classed as a private offense, and must be prosecuted, not on information by the public prosecutor, but by complaint on behalf of an injured party. In the court of first instance of Albay, eighth judicial district, Philippine Islands, Adriano Mortiga, the defendant in error, as the husband of Maria Obleno, filed a complaint charging her with adultery committed with Vicente Serra, the other plaintiff in error, who was also charged. The complaint is in the margin.²

The defendants were arraigned, pleaded not guilty, were tried by the court without a jury, and were convicted. The court stated its reasons in a written opinion, analyzing the testimony, and pointing out that all the essential ingredients of the crime of adultery, as defined by the articles of the Penal Code already referred to, were shown to have been committed. The accused were sentenced to pay one half of the costs and to imprisonment for two years, four months, and one day. The record does not disclose that any objection was taken to the sufficiency of the complaint before the trial. Indeed, it does not appear that, by objection in any form, directly or indirectly, was any question raised in the trial court concerning the sufficiency of the complaint. An appeal was taken to the supreme court of the Philippine Islands. In that court error was assigned on the ground, first, that 'the complaint is null and void because it lacks the essential requisite provided by law;' and, second and third, because it did not appear from the proof that guilt had been established beyond a reasonable doubt. The conviction was affirmed. The assignment of error which was based on the contention that the conviction was erroneous because the complaint did not sufficiently state the essential ingredients of the offense charged was thus disposed of by the court in its opinion: 'The objections to the complaint, based upon an insufficient statement of the facts constituting the offense, cannot be considered here, because they were not presented in the court below. United States v. Sarabia, 3 Off. Gaz. No. 29.'

The assignments based on the insufficiency of the proof to show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt were disposed of by an analysis of the evidence, which the court deemed led to the conclusion that all the statutory elements of the crime were proven beyond a reasonable doubt. An application for a rehearing, styled an exception, was made, in which it was insisted that it was the duty of the court to consider the assignment based on the insufficiency of the complaint, since not to do so would be a denial of due process of law. The rehear- ing was refused, and the sentence imposed below was increased to three years, six months, and twenty-nine days, on the ground that this was the minimum punishment provided for the offense.

The errors assigned on this writ of error, and the propositions urged at bar to support them, are confined to the assertion that the refusal of the court below to consider the assignment of error concerning the insufficiency of the complaint amounted to a conviction of the accused without informing them of the nature and character of the offense with which they were charged, and was, besides, equivalent to a conviction without due process of law. It is settled that, by virtue of the Bill of Rights enacted by Congress for the Philippine Islands (32 Stat. at L. 691, 692, chap. 1369, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1905, p. 391), that guaranties equivalent to the due process and equal protection of the law clause of the 14th Amendment, the twice in jeopardy clause of the 5th Amendment, and the substantial guaranties of the 6th Amendment, exclusive of the right to trial by jury, were extended to the Philippine Islands. It is further settled that the guaranties which Congress has extended to the Philippine Islands are to be interpreted as meaning what the like provisions meant at the time when Congress made them applicable to the Philippine Islands. Kepner v. United States, 195 U. S. 100, 49 L. ed. 114, 24 Sup. Ct. Rep. 797.

For the purpose, therefore, of passing on the errors assigned, we must test the correctness of the action of the court below by substantially the same criteria which we would apply to a case arising in the United States and controlled by the Bill of Rights expressed in the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Turning to the text of the articles of the Philippine Penal Code upon which the prosecution was based, it will be seen that an essential ingredient of the crime of adultery, as therein defined, is knowledge on the part of the man charged of the fact that the woman with whom the adultery was committed was a married woman. Turning to the complaint upon which the prosecution was begun, it will be at once seen that it was deficient, because it did not specify the place where the crime was committed, nor does it expressly state that Vicente Serra, the accused man, knew that Maria Obleno, the woman accused, was, at the time of the guilty cohabitation, a married woman. It results that there were deficiencies in the complaint which, if raised in any form in the trial court before judgment, would have required the trial court to hold that the complaint was inadequate. But the question for decision is not whether the complaint, which was thus deficient, could have been sustained, in view of the constitutional guaranties, if a challenge as to its sufficiency had been presented in any form to the trial court before final judgment, but whether, when no such challenge was made in the trial court before judgment, a denial of the guaranties of the statutory Bill of Rights arose from the action of the appellate court in refusing to entertain an objection to the sufficiency of the complaint because no such ground was urged in the trial court. Thus reducing the case to the real issue enables us to put out of view a number of decisions of this court referred to in the margin,³ as well as many decided cases of state courts referred to in the brief of counsel, because they are irrelevant, since all the former, and, if not all, certainly all of the latter, concern the soundness of objections made in the trial court, by the accused, to the sufficiency of indictments or informations.

In Ex parte Parks, 93 U. S. 18, 23 L. ed. 787, the case was this: The petitioner, Parks, applied to this...