The Colonial Roots of Criminal Procedure in the Philippines


THE COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL
PROCEDURE IN THE PHILIPPINES

Amy RossABr

I. INTRODUCTION

Centuries of colonial rule profoundly influenced Filipino social,
political, and legal institutions. Filipino law, in particular, evolved as a
synthesis of indigenous, Spanish (Roman), and American common laws,
each building on its forerunner to create a system unique to the Philippines.
As a succession of alien powers colonized the Philippines, they preserved
some of the existing laws, altering only those in conflict with their own and
adding a few to encompass new commercial, political, or religious
conditions. When the Spanish established a colonial government in 1565,
they initially permitted the native inhabitants to continue with many of
their indigenous customs instead of imposing their own traditions derived
from the Roman legal code. As they became more entrenched, however,
the Spanish attempted to subvert many of the customary laws. American
officials, who displaced the Spanish in 1898, generally adopted the same
policy by incorporating certain features of Roman law while
simultaneously tolerating some of the remaining native legal traditions.

The Americans thus drew on much of the existing substantive law but
also found that the Spanish had failed to introduce laws of procedure to the
archipelago. Moreover, the few procedural measures that the Spanish
brought with them appeared to be inconsistent with American concepts of
justice. Within two years of their arrival, U.S. colonial officials issued
General Orders No. 58, which instituted a code of criminal procedure that
was more consonant With American legal ideals. The code of criminal
procedure the American colonials introduced in 1900, remains virtually
unchanged in 1997 and governs present-day criminal procedure in the
Philippines. Thus procedural reforms of the colonial past had a tremendous
impact on the current Filipino legal system.

* Attorney, Davis Polk & Wardwell; B.A. (Southeast Asian History), Cornell University;,
J.D., M.A. (Southeast Asian History), University of Wisconsin. The author wishes to thank
Professors Alfred W. McCoy and Morris Rossabi for their endless patience and assistance in editing
this article.



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When they drafted and implemented such legal documents as General
Orders No. 58 in the early twentieth century, American colonials enlisted
the aid of the Filipino educated elite, the ilustrados. Throughout their
tenure in the Philippines, American officials employed the assistance of the
ilustrados to legitimize their rule. This collaboration enabled the American
officials to govern the archipelago through educated intermediaries and
freed them from direct administration of the lower-class Filipinos.'

Although many of the rights Americans offered the Filipinos were
similar to those guaranteed to U.S. citizens under the Constitution, the
colonial regime never formally extended civil rights to the inhabitants of
the Islands. Most importantly, during the American occupation, the
Filipinos never had the right to a trial by jury, a cornerstone of American
democratic values.

Seeking to avert any possible threat to their control of the Philippines,
the American colonials elected not to include jury trials in General Orders
No. 58. They feared that giving the ordinary Filipino a determinative role
in the judicial system might pose a challenge to their authority. To justify
this decision, the colonial regime reasoned that since the Filipinos had
never had jury trials, the Americans were not depriving them of a right
which they had once enjoyed. American officials also asserted that the
majority of Filipinos did not possess the intellectual capacity or cultural
sophistication to judge their peers competently, exhibiting the Orientalist
attitude prevalent in many colonials throughout Asia.2

Most Europeans who came to Asia in the nineteenth century carried
with them the so-called "white man's burden" and a duty to civilize but not
associate with the natives. Assuming the natives were not capable of living
under Western laws, colonials often limited indigenous access to their own
legal systems, sometimes administering their colonies under a "dual legal
structure,",3 with one set of laws for the foreigners and one for the native
inhabitants. When Dutch traders established the Dutch East Indies Trading
Company in 1602, they conducted their transactions according to Dutch
laws rather than abiding by the native adat customs. Within a few years,

1. GLENN ANTHONY MAY, SOCIAL ENGINEERING IN THE PHILIPPINES: THE AIMS, EXECUTION

AND IMPACT OF AMERICAN COLONIAL POLICY, 1900-1913, 9-10 (1980).
2. PETER GORDON GOWING, MANDATE IN MOROLAND: THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT OF

MUSLIM FILIPINOS 1899-1920,45 (1977).
3. C. Fasseur, Colonial Dilemma: Van Vollenhoven and the Struggle Between Adat and

Western Law in Indonesia, in EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND LAW: THE ENCOUNTER OF EUROPEAN AND

INDIGENOUS LAW IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY AFRICA AND ASIA 237 (W.J. Mommsen & J.A.

De Moor, eds., 1992) [hereinafter EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND LAW].

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE INPHILIPPINES 177

separate courts were established for the Dutch community so
that a quite autonomous 'European' legal system quickly grew
up beside the one(s) indigenous to the islands. From the very
beginning of Dutch contact therefore, Western law and local
customary law were seen as distinct entities serving separate
clientele - the one foreign and European, and the other
indigenous Asian.4

Daniel S. Lev, a scholar of Indonesian law, wrote that these segregated
legal systems facilitated efficient exploitation of the indigenous peoples.5

In the process of exploiting the natives, Dutch, American, and British
colonists, who imposed a similar segregated legal and political system in
Malaysia,6 often refused the natives their basic civil rights.

However, because establishment of a colony is inconsistent with
American democratic values.' American officials attempted to justify their
occupation of the Philippines, asserting that they would not follow the path
of traditional European imperialism. They claimed they would not exploit
the Philippines for their own economic gainS as had the Dutch in Indonesia
or the British in Malaysia. Instead, they would remain in the Philippines
only long enough to instruct the natives in civilized rule and democratic
law9 because they assumed that without American guidance the Philippine
Islands would fall into "widespread anarchy."'0

Thus, the Americans introduced changes, facilitated by the ilustrados,
characterized primarily by procedural rather than substantive laws. They
instituted General Orders No. 58, in part to demonstrate to the Filipinos
that the rights of the accused were paramount in a just and democratic
society. However, their decision not to implement a procedural system
which included jury trials exemplifies colonial attitudes in the nineteenth

4. SUDARGO GAUTAMA AND ROBERT N. HORNICI. AN INTRODUcrIONTO INDONESIAN LAWv:
UNITY IN DIVERSrY 2 (1974).

5. Daniel S. Lev, Colonial Law and the Genesis of the Indonesian State, 40 INDONESIA 60
(1985).

6. JOHN G. BUTCHER, THE BRITISH IN MALAYA 1800-1941: THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF A
EUROPEAN COMNINfY IN COLONIAL SounH-EAST ASIA 97-120 (1979).

7. D.K. FIELDHOUSE, COLONIALISM 1870-1945: AN INTRODUCTION 48 (1981).
8. U.S. BUREAU OF INSULAR AFFAIRS, REPORTS ON THE LAw OFTHE CIVIL GOVERNM Er IN

TERRITORY SUBJEC TO MILITARY OCCUPATION BY THE MILITARY FORCES OFTHE UNITE STATES
11 (1902) [hereinafter LAW OFTHE CIVIL GOVERNMiENT].

9. Michael Cullinane, Ilustrado Politics: The Response of the Filipino Educated Elite to
American Colonial Rule, 1899-1907 75 (1989) (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan).

10. FIELDHOUSE, supra note 7, at 48.



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LA W

and early twentieth centuries and a desire to retain power in the hands of
the elite, ideas inconsistent with true democracy.

II. THE SPANISH ERA (1521-1898)

The arrival of the Spanish ushered in an era of foreign rule and an
introduction of non-indigenous legal institutions to the Philippine Islands.
Fernao de Magellan, a Portuguese navigator employed by the Spanish,
reached the Philippines in 1521, though the Spanish did not truly dominate
the Islands and establish a colonial government until after 1565. Two main
groups of Spaniards arrived in the Archipelago during the next two
centuries: Catholic missionaries who hoped to convert the Filipinos and
colonial administrators who sought economic gain. Forced to reach a
compromise that reconciled their conflicting interests, religion and profit,
the Spanish government built an empire around "the inseparable union of
the Church and the state."" These dual objectives shaped the policies of
the colonial administration.

A. Roman Law in the Philippines12

Using the modified Roman laws as a model, the Spanish crown
enacted the Recopilaci6n de las Leyes de los Reyes de las Indias, or the
Law of the Indies, on May 18, 1680. This code consisted of cdulas or
collections of orders carried out in the name of the king;'" decretos or
orders concerning the church carried out in the name of the king; 4

resoluciones or "orders rendered by some superior authority on questions
duly submitted, and thereafter sent to the inferior authorities for their
guidance;"15 reglamentos or written instructions from the central

11. JOHN LEDDY PHELAN, THE HISPANIZATION OF THE PHILIPPINES: SPANISH AIMS AND

FILIPINO RESPONSES, 1565-1700 64 (1959).
12. The Spanish officials introduced a legal system based upon their own adaptation of Roman

law. As modified by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, this Roman Code became dominant
throughout Western Europe, except in the British Isles which had its own traditions of Common
Law. Modem law and the Napoleonic Code have, in essence, replaced Roman law in Europe but at
the time of the Spanish conquest of the Philippines, the Roman Code was still the dominant legal
system.

13. 4 LIBRO SEGUNDO, TITULO PRIMERO DE LAS LEYES, PROVISIONES, C9DULAS, Y
ORDENANZAS REALES, 126-132, 186-187 [hereinafter LEYES, PROVISIONES, CDULAS, Y

ORDENANZAS REALES].
14. Note the lack of separation of church and state.
15. CHARLES BURKE ELLIOTT, THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF THE MILITARY REGIME:

AMERICA OVERSEAS 233 (1917).

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 179

government; and ordenamientos6 and pragmdticasY both orders from the
king relating to matters not covered in the cddulas.8 Though these
documents did not constitute a cohesive and comprehensive code of laws,
they contained many of the regulations that governed the Philippines in the
first years of Spanish rule.

In hopes of averting native resistance, the colonial government
permitted the Filipinos to retain their "pagan" laws as long as they did not
blatantly conflict with Spanish traditions, a practice which the Americans
continued in their years of rule. John Phelan, an historian of the
Philippines, wrote of the Spanish period that "dowvry and inheritance...
received recognition in the Spanish law courts as customary law in all
inter-Filipino litigations. The Spaniards did not object to the pre-Hispanic
tradition of the groom providing the dowry, although this custom differed
from Spanish usage."19 In general, however, the Spanish version of Roman
law replaced many indigenous regulations. For legal matters not covered
in the Law of the Indies, the authorities turned to the Code of Castile (the
Fuero Juzgo, Fuero Real, and Siete Partidas of Alfonso X, all written prior
to 1266 A.D.) or the later Novisima Recopilacidn de Castilla, imposing
still another set of laws on the Filipinos and requiring lawyers to master
additional codes. As one legal historian explains, "the Filipino lawyer
whose case was not determined by the Laws of the Indies or any statute
subsequently passed for or extended to the islands found himself thrown
back on the ancient Spanish Codes."20

B. Spanish Courts in the Philippines

In addition to bringing Roman laws to the Philippines, the Spanish
rulers also introduced a new court system. The gobernadorcillo, or village
leader, a Filipino, who could often mediate and resolve conflicts on the
local level without resorting to more formal proceedings, had jurisdiction
over civil cases and petty criminal disputes. He could also settle questions
about land boundaries and ownership. If the parties wished to appeal his
decisions, they took their case to the next rung of the bureaucracy,
presenting their arguments before the Spanish alcaldes mayores. The
alcaldes mayores also presided over all initial criminal cases and civil suits

16. LYES, PRovlsiows, CtDUt.AS, Y ORDENANZAs REALES, supra note 13, at 282.
17. Id. at 297.
18. ELUOTT, supra note 15, at 233.
19. PHELAN, supra note 11, at 64.
20. ELUOIT, supra note 15, at 233.



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OFASIANLAW

involving substantial sums. Their decisions could, in turn, be appealed to
the Audiencia Territorial de Manila ("Audiencia"),2 1 the Supreme Court
of Manila. 22

First formed in 1584, the Audiencia remained as the highest court in
the Philippines for most of the period of Spanish rule.23 The body "was
composed of one chief justice, two presidents of chambers (civil and
criminal branches), eight associate justices, additional justices for
vacancies (magistrados suplentes), and [an] attorney-general and other
officials."'24 The Audiencia reviewed all criminal cases, whether appealed
or not, with the power to overrule any of the lower courts' decisions and
all civil cases that were appealed.' Presiding over the Audiencia, the
Governor-General had the final say in all criminal cases and civil cases on
appeal in the Philippines, combining the executive and the judicial
branches of the government.2 6 As the Spanish system of justice in the
Philippines became more dominant, Spanish officials separated the
Audiencia into two branches, one for civil cases and the other for criminal
cases. Each branch had separate justices 7 headed by a President.28

The last appellant body was the Council of the Indies in Spain.
However, disputes among Filipinos rarely reached the Council, as the
colonial government tried to dissuade the natives from wasting their time
and money on what the Spanish generally thought to be minor
disagreements.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Spanish colonial
government had enacted numerous laws regulating everything from mining

21. PHELAN, supra note 11, at 129.
22. MARIANO A. ALBERT, LA LEY PROCEDIMIENTO CRIMINAL 13 (1927).
23. Spanish officials briefly abolished the Audiencia in 1589 but then reinstated it in 1596.
24. GEORGE A. MALCOLM, THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: ITS DEVELOPMENT

AND FUNDAMENTALS 74 (1916).
25. David Cecil Johnson, Courts in the Philippines, Old.-New, 14 MicH. L. REV. 300, 318

(1916).
26. PETER W. STANLEY, A NATION IN THE MAKING: THE PHILPPINES AND THE UNITED STATES,

1899-192120 (1974).
27. U.S. PHILIPPINE COMMISSION, REPORT OF THE TAFT COMMISSION, FIRST MESSAGE TO THE

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 122 (1900) [hereinafter REPORT OF THE PHILIPPINE COMMISSION).
28. ELIODORO G. ROBLES, THE PHILIPPINES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 195 (1969).
29. One of the few cases to reach the Council of the Indies in Madrid involved a dispute

between a member of the Chinese mestizo elite and the Spanish Catholic Church in Cebu. This case
tied up the Philippine court systems for more than twenty years before it reached the Council of the
Indies. The appeal ended in 1850 when the Spanish justices found for the Cebu clergymen and

'brought a crushing legal defeat upon the mestizo community." Michael Cullinane, The Changing
Nature of the Cebu Urban Elite in the 19th Century, in PHILIPPINE SOCIAL HISTORY: GLOBAL TRADE
AND LOCAL TRANSFORMATIONS 262 (Alfred W. McCoy & Ed C. de Jesus, eds., 1982).

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 181

and commerce to military justice and foreign water rights, hoping through
its legal system to create a prosperous Catholic colony. Although the early
colonialists attempted to preserve native legal customs, by 1887, Spanish
traditions had replaced almost all of the indigenous practices." George A.
Malcolm, a Professor of Law at the University of the Philippines in the
early twentieth century, praised these laws, writing that the Spanish system
was "by far the most valuable monument of legislation, not merely of
Spain but of Europe, since the publication of the Roman (Justinian)
Code."31 The culmination of these Spanish laws was the Penal Code of
1887, enacted on the eve of the Spanish withdrawal from the Philippines.

C. Criminal Law and Procedure

Beginning with a section defining a crime, the Penal Code of 1887 is
primarily a list of crimes and the corresponding punishments for each.3 It
provides no guidance for trial procedures nor does it offer the defendant
any legal rights. In his report to President William McKinley in 1900,
William Howard Taft, a member of the Philippine Commission, devoted
a short section to criminal law and procedure during the Spanish regime.
He wrote that:

a code of criminal procedure did never exist in the Philippines,
not even an arranged compilation of lawful provisions relating
to criminal procedure. There were only scattered provisions in
the form of laws, royal "cedulas," royal orders, and autos
acordados .. .. Although there was no systematic law or
complete body of laws in reference to criminal procedure, still
a constant and uniform practice existed in all provinces
throughout the islands.33

The "practice" included trials in front of a justice appointed and under the
supervision of the Governor-General. The Spanish never implemented a
system of jury trials in their tenure of the Philippines but instead permitted
a judge to render all decisions. 4

30. STANLEY, supra note 26, at 20.
31. MALCOU, supra note 24, at 56.
32. U.S. DIVISION OF CUSTOMS AND INSULAR AFFAIRS, TRANSLATION oFTHE PENAL CODE IN

FORCE IN THE PHILPINES 9-22 (1900).
33. REPORT OF THE PHILIPPINE COMMISSION, supra note 27, at 237.
34. Lebbeus R WVilfley, Trial by Jury and 'Double Jeopardy in the Philippines, 13 YALE L.

421,423 (1904).



COL UMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LA W

A criminal trial in the Spanish colonial Philippines began when the
accusing party filed a complaint, which often included two completely
different crimes committed by two distinct individuals in separate
locations. The underlying assumption was that the alleged criminals were
related. After the prosecution filed the complaint with the lower court, a
period known as the sumario began.

The lawyers conducted the sumario in the absence of the defendant. 3

Equivalent to a period of discovery in the United States, the sumario was,
in effect, a period when each side investigated and researched its case. In
his study of the Philippines, James LeRoy, defined it as the "summary
procedure preliminary to [the defendant's] arraignment on a formal
charge. 36 The sumario often extended over a period of years, with the
defendant spending the time in prison, for the Spanish had no system of
bail in cases that had a penalty of presidio correccional, or a time greater
than six months. 37 Although the sumario was in some ways similar to
discovery, American criminal procedure mandates that counsel advise the
defendant of all the proceedings and that the lawyers conduct the discovery
as expeditiously as possible--a sharp distinction from the Spanish-imposed
arrangement in the Philippines.

Following sumario, the trial began. At this time the parties advised
the defendant of the charges against him. Once cognizant of the
allegations, the accused was required to offer evidence regarding the crime
with which he was charged. If he remained silent, the court interpreted this
to mean that he was guilty and he was charged formally.38 In theory, he had
the right to force the prosecution to show him all the evidence supporting
the charges, but in practice this scarcely happened.39 In fact, Spanish laws
permitted the defendant no civil rights but forced him to appear in court
while the prosecution presented its case against him, with the burden of
proof and production of evidence on the defendant.4' The state and elite
interests predominated over individual rights.

35. DEAN C. WORCESTER, THE PHILIPPINES: PAST AND PRESENT 326 (1930).
36. JAMES LEROY, 1 THE AMERICANS IN THE PHILIPPINES 108 (1914).
37. Id.
38. F.C. Fisher, Some Peculiarities of Philippine Criminal Law and Procedure, 19 VA. L. REv.

33,41 (1932).
39. WORCESTER, supra note 35, at 327.
40. W.F. Norris, The Criminal Code of the Philippines, in 15 THE GREEN BAG 433 (1903).

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 183

D. The Spanish Catholic Church in the Philippines

Spanish authorities integrated the Catholic Church into their system
of government and legal codes.4! ' Spanish law, for example, gave the parish
priests the right to suggest candidates for the juez de paz as well as access
to the municipal court. The Archbishop of Manila had the right to sit on the
administrative council, and church officials often performed political
functions. In addition, the most powerful man in the Philippine
government, the Governor-General, frequently meddled in church affairs.

The Catholic Church often played a significant role in the Spanish
colonial administration. The clergy frequently served as a link between the
Filipino people and the colonial administration, so that the Filipinos did not
feel isolated from the government4 2 The Spanish government depended on
the clergy to "control and in large part administer its colony:"3 Parish
priests or friars at the local level sometimes arbitrated moral and civic
disputes. Thus, the bureaucracy and the Church were interconnected for
much of the Spanish colonial regime, 4 and as Robles wrote, "for all
purposes, the Church from 1861 to the close of the century was part of the
government proper."'45 Such unity prevented the Spanish regime from
cooperating with the ilustrados, the educated elite of the Philippines,
because, as we shall note, the ilustrados sought the separation of church
and state.

E. The End of the Spanish Era

By the 1880's, many young Filipinos had perceived that both the
Spanish colonial regime and the Catholic Church had spent much of the
past three hundred years depriving the Filipinos of basic economic,
political, and legal rights. From their perspective, the Spanish colonists had
exploited the indigenous people for their own economic and religious gain.
In opposition to this perceived oppression, a number of Filipinos followed
the lead of the reform-minded Filipino intellectual elite, the ilustrados,
who initiated a nationalist movement.

41. ROBLES, supra note 28, at 195.
42. MARCELO H. DEL PILAR, MONASTIC SUPRFMACY IN THE PHILIPPINES 14 (Encanacion

Alozona trans. 1958).
43. JOHN N. SCHUMACHER, THEPROPAGANDA MOVBiENT, 1880-1895 1 (1973).
44. Andre Lebon, A Conflict of Race: Americans and Filipinos, in FROM,- REVOLUTION TOA

SECOND COLONIZATION: THE PHILIPPINES UNDER SPAIN AND THE UNrIED STATES 22-25 (Marietta
Enriquez Guerrero trans., 1990).

45. ROBLES, supra note 28, at 195.



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OFASIANLAW

Some of the ilustrados had traveled to Spain to receive what they
assumed to be a superior education unavailable to them in the
Philippines.' During their time abroad, they studied European philosophy,
particularly the views stemming from the Enlightenment.47 Many became
active in the "propaganda movement," criticizing the Spanish colonial
regime in the Philippines and urging the colonials to reform their policies."
These ilustrados called for "individual rights, liberties and guarantees of
person, property and domicile, with freedom of worship and complete
separation of church and state,"49 principles which paralleled later
American ideals. In 1888, a group of ilustrados, the "Asociacidn Hispano-
Filipina," proposed a series of laws that would address such issues. The
Asociacirn planned: "to work for (1) the reforms in the judiciary and the
penitentiary, (2) the development of Philippine agriculture, (3) the
construction of roads, (4) reforms in the governmental administration, (5)
the compulsory teaching of the Spanish language in schools, and (6) the
establishment of secondary schools."5 Although the ilustrados did not
attempt to overthrow the Spanish regime, the colonials moved to crush the
Filipino nationalists, who posed a threat to the colonial administration.

Yet, in order to deflect and diffuse some of the ilustrados' criticism,
the Spanish colonials attempted to reform part of the legal system. In 1890
and 1891, less than ten years before the Americans arrived in the
Philippines, the Spanish rulers overhauled the system of justice. By royal
decree, the government declared that each town must have ajuez de paz or
a justice of the peace. Given powers to hear and offer judgments in civil
cases involving less than two hundred dollars and in preliminary criminal
cases, thejuez de paz resolved minor disputes, often concerning property
or inheritance rights.5" The juez de paz adopted most of the
gobernadorcillo's judicial duties, permitting the gobernadorcillo to focus
exclusively on his administrative functions. 2 In its reforms, the colonial

46. Although some ilustrados studied abroad, to be considered an ilustrado a person only need
be educated in Western culture and intellect and be fluent in Spanish not necessarily schooled
outside the Philippines. Cullinane, supra note 9, at 39-42.

47. BONIFACIO SALAMANCA, THE FILIPINO REACTION TO AMERICAN RULE, 1901-1913 23

(1968).
48. SCHUMACHER, supra note 43, at 15-16.
49. MAY, supra note 1, at 28.
50. DEL PILAR, supra note 42, at 6; see also SCHUMACHER, supra note 43, at 164.
51. MAY, supra note 1, at 57.
52. George R. Harvey, The Administration of Justice in the Philippine Islands, 9 ILL. L. Rev.

73, 77 (1914).

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 185

government also shifted the power of supervising the courts away from the
alcaldes mayores and turned it over to the civil governor, an attempt to
create a more centralized system ofjustice that would deflect some Filipino
resentment."

Even with these reforms, the Spanish judicial system was still
inefficient. First, an individual could object to the judge and initiate action
against him at any point in the proceedings. The entire trial then had to be
moved to another court, presided over by a new justice, but no decision
could be rendered on the main issue until the problems with the first judge
had been resolved, thus greatly lengthening the trial process.! Second, the
Audiencia continued to review every criminal trial and all civil cases that
ended in acquittal. Finally, Spanish justices would often listen to the
testimony of one witness for an hour or so and then adjourn for a week or
more before hearing from the next witness.55 Such delays and procedural
difficulties angered many Filipinos and contributed to unrest in the late
nineteenth century.

III. THE AmERICAN ERA

By the late 1890's, Philippine resistance to the Spanish had gained
such strength that by August of 1898 the revolutionaries controlled most
of the archipelago, with the exception of the city of Manila. The United
States, which sought to become a power in the Pacific, supported the
Filipinos, and became embroiled in the Spanish-American War, partly to
gain influence over the Philippines, and other non-Pacific Spanish
colonies. The Spanish colonial powers were weak and were compelled to
submit to American forces after an extremely brief war.

Direct United States involvement in Philippine government and law
stemmed from the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. The Spanish
ceded the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba to the United States under the
Treaty of Paris signed in December of 1898. Ratified by the U.S. Congress
shortly thereafter, the Treaty initiated an era of what the American
government termed "benevolent assimilation"'56 for the Philippines. This
phrase, which justified virtual annexation of the Philippines, implied that
American rule would differ from governance by the European imperialists.

53. Id. at 78.
54. WORCESTER, supra note 35, at 325.
55. Arthur F. Odlin, American Courts in the Philippines, Address delivered before the Florida

State Bar Association (1912), in 47 AM. L. REV. 321, 328 (1913).
56. LERoY, supra note 36, at 399-403.



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

Asserting that their motive in the Philippines was to teach and civilize
the natives,57 the Americans disclaimed any colonial intentions. According
to D.K. Fieldhouse, a scholar of colonial theory, "colonialism means
exploitation by the foreign society and its agents who occupied the
dependency to serve their own interests, not that of the subjected people."58

Initially, Americans did not enter the Archipelago for their own economic
or religious gains, as the Spanish had, and therefore, in their eyes, did not
colonize the Philippines, but rather "adopted" the country under what
Fieldhouse termed a "trusteeship." He wrote that a "trusteeship implies that
the empire entailed a moral responsibility for the welfare and evolution of
the dependencies so that policy must be formulated with their interests in
the forefront."59

Unfamiliar with Filipino culture and society when they arrived, the
Americans relied on the ilustrado elite to help define their colonial policy
and to persuade other Filipinos that American rule was in their best
interests. Believing that conceding to American rule would offer them
privileges they had not known during the Spanish regime, many ilustrados
cooperated with American officials in the Philippines and "the Americans
ultimately pacified the country, by winning over the elites of wealth and
education." '

With American control came U.S. law, which was an Anglican or
Common Law system adopted from the British. Changing periodically to
reflect new social developments, this law has its basis in a court system of
jury trials, permitting an accused to be judged by a group of his peers,
rather than one lone justice. When the Philippines came under American
jurisdiction, the colonial administration promoted a gradual shift from
Roman law and indigenous practices towards Common Law, while
permitting certain aspects of Roman law and indigenous traditions to
continue. Though American colonial rulers mandated the use of many
elements of the Common Law, they never introduced a system of jury
trials. Instead they focused on separating church and state and imposing
codes of procedure in the Archipelago.

57. Cullinane, supra note 9, at 75.
58. FIELDHOUSE, supra note 7, at 7.
59. Id. at 27.
60. DAVID WURFEL, FILIPINO PoLCs: DEVELOPMENT AND DECAY 7 (1988).

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 187

A. Military Rule - The Schurman Commission (1898-1901)

1. "Universal Suffrage" and Separation of Church and State

As Commander-in-Chief of the United States, President William
McKinley ruled the Philippines for nearly three years until a new system
of government was established. Needing administrators of the colony to
execute his orders, he created the First Philippine Commission and
appointed Jacob Schurman, Major-General Elwell S. Otis, Rear Admiral
George Dewey, Charles Derby, and Dean C. Worcester. The Commission's
primary duties were to promote U.S. interests and to provide for the
security of Americans in the Philippines.6' During this initial phase,
American administrators sought principally to remedy the errors of past
rulers rather than to offer new initiatives.62 Commissioner Worcester later
wrote that the Americans "adopted the policy of passing no laws except in
case of emergency." 63

The Commission first enacted legislation that permitted Filipino
males to vote if they: (1) could speak and read English or Spanish; (2)
owned property valued at more than 500 pesos (at that time U.S. $250); or
(3) had held a government position during Spanish colonial rule.(' The law
mandated that municipal officers be Filipinos elected by popular vote.
Unlike the Spanish, the Americans did not appoint government officials.
Yet those Filipinos eligible to vote and therefore hold office, only about
three percent of the total population, were generally members of the same
class of people from whom the Spanish had chosen their bureaucrats, the
ilustrados. In sum, the United States confirmed the power of the
established Filipino elite.

In the Philippines, the Spanish colonial government and the Catholic
Church had collaborated, often operating as one unit. But American legal
principles, as embodied in the Constitution, would not sanction such
interlocking relationships between church and state. Thus, on December
18, 1898, shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the U.S.
government made its first substantial change in Philippine law by issuing
General Orders No. 68. This law introduced civil marriage to the
Philippines, the initial step in the U.S. effort to separate church and state.

61. LAW OFTHECIVILGOVERNMENTsupra note 8, at 11.
62. STANLEY, supra note 26, at 90.
63. WORCESTER, supra note 35, at 275.
64. U.S. PHILIPPINE COMMISSION, ADMINISTRATIVE CODE OF THE PHILIPINE ISLANDS 224

(1916) [hereinafter ADIMISTRATIVE CODE].



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

Such reforms coincided with ilustrado visions of a new society and thus
they assisted the Americans in efforts to create a secular government.

2. Initial Collaboration

In 1899, Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, and other ilustrados, came
before the Schurman Commission denouncing both Filipino actions against
the United States government and anti-American sentiments. The
Americans realized that these men "would prove useful allies in the future.
'As leaders of the people they must be the chief agents in securing their
peoples' loyal obedience to the new government.' 65

The Americans relied on ilustrado lawyers in particular, for assistance
in developing and implementing legal codes that conformed to American
judicial standards. Owen Lynch, a legal scholar of the Philippines, wrote
that among the ilustrados, "law was the most attractive [profession]. 'The
great ambition of most Filipinos in a position to do so was to study law and
enter the government service."'66 More specifically, "law was considered
a passport to the political arena" 67 and "a number [of ilustrados] were
largely involved with the practice, teaching, and study of the law."68 In
Michael Cullinane's list of important Filipino political figures and
ilustrados, nearly thirty-six percent were members of the legal profession,
a higher percentage than in any other profession. Cullinane noted that
when Major-General Otis, the Military Governor of the Philippines in
1900, began reforming the system of justice, he appointed twenty-eight
ilustrados to positions on the courts. 6 9 Thus, the Americans allowed the
ilustrados to dominate the Filipino judicial process from the outset, even
appointing the ilustrado Cayetano Arellano as Chief Justice of the
Philippine Supreme Court in June of 1899.

The Americans permitted the Spanish court system to remain
essentially untouched: Filipino justices of the peace, most of whom were
ilustrados, presided over the local courts and took charge of routine legal
matters, but the highest court of appeals was the U.S. Supreme Court
instead of the Spanish Council of the Indies. In sum, the Schurman

65. MAY, supra note 1, at 27.
66. Owen J. Lynch, Indigenous Social Formations and the Philippine State, in CRITICAL

DECADE: PROSPECTS FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE PHILIPPINES IN THE 1990's 26 (Dolores Flamiano &
Donald Goertzen, eds., 1990).

67. Id. at 27.
68. Ruby Rivera Paredes, The Partido Federal, 1900-1907: Political Collaboration in Colonial

Manila, 85 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1989).
69. Cullinane, supra note 9, at 75.

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE INPHIUPPINES 189

Commission relied heavily on the power and the knowledge of the old
Filipino elite, as did its successor, the Taft Commission.

3. General Orders No. 58-The Code of Criminal Procedure

The Americans introduced a second major change to Philippine law
on April 30, 1900 when Major-General Otis issued General Orders No. 58
as the Code of Criminal Procedure for the Philippines.70 To compose this
code, Otis enlisted the aid of a group of ilustrado lawyers and justices
familiar with the Spanish legal system then in place. The Code, which went
into effect on May 15, 1900, included a clause that all existing laws should
remain valid unless specifically repealed or modified!' On the assumption
that an entirely new criminal code would disrupt the work of judges and
lawyers who were already familiar with the present system, the U.S.
military government chose only to adopt new procedural laws. It left the
substantive Roman laws intact, with one administrator praising the existing
Penal Code as a "product of the best legal minds of Spain." 3 Thus
American officials permitted much of the Spanish substantive criminal law
to continue for it was not inconsistent with their legal tradition.

However, the Americans also incorporated innovations by introducing
the Filipinos to the writ of habeas corpus, a privilege guaranteed in the U.S.
Constitution.74 They sought to alleviate the problems engendered by the
lack of procedural rights in the Spanish system and its harsh punishments.
The writ of habeas corpus is intended to "test the legality of the detention
or imprisonment" and to release a person from unlawful imprisonment!'
Through the inefficiency of their judicial system, the Spanish had detained
many Filipino prisoners far longer than their maximum possible prison
sentence. Considering the Spanish practice to be cruel and unusual
punishment, the Americans permitted prisoners to file for a writ of habeas
corpus if they believed they were wrongly detained.7 6

General Orders No. 58 also changed the manner of filing a complaint.
A sworn statement usually filed by the aggrieved party in a lower court
(often the Justice of the Peace courts in the Philippines), or a complaint

70. Gen. Orders No. 58, Office of the U.S. Military Governor in the Philippine Islands (1900)
[hereinafter Gen. Orders No. 58].

71. d. § 1.
72. CAMERON W. FoRBEs THE PIUPPINE ISLANDS 140-141 (1945).
73. James H. Blount, Some Legal Aspects of the Philippines, 14 Am. LAW. 495, 496 (1906).
74. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 9, cl. 2.
75. BLACK'S LAW DIcTIONARY 709 (6th ed. 1990).
76. ALBERT, supra note 22, at 40.



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

initiated a legal proceeding. The Orders now required that the complaint
be presented soon after the alleged offense had been committed.77 The
Spanish had been more lax about the timeliness of the filing, but the new
American regulations mandated that a complaint had to be submitted as
soon as the parties became aware of the infraction to insure accuracy and
truthfulness.

Having no formal code of procedure, the Spanish offered no guidance
for filing a complaint. General Orders No. 58 offered an entire section
devoted to the procedures involved in submitting such a document,78

including: (1) the full and true name of the defendant(s); (2) the
designation of the offense; (3) the acts complained of in plain language; (4)
a statement that the offense was committed in that court's jurisdiction; and
(5) the names of the persons involved in the offense.79

Requiring a designation of the offense compelled the person filing the
complaint to focus on the offense and determine if it had any chance of
success before he tied up the courts with frivolous litigation. Since this
section contained only the accusers' version of the facts, the offender could
be convicted of either a graver or a lesser offense if other evidence
emerged when the case went to trial.

Pursuant to this section, the person bringing charges had to document
the acts that "constitut[ed] the crime or public offense in ordinary and
concise language ... in such a form as to enable a person of common
understanding to know what is intended."8 This document provided the
court with the alleged actions that comprised the offense. Failing to use
formal or statutory language did not render the complaint invalid, but the
correct format had to be used.8'

77. GuiLLERmo B. GUEVARA, THE CODE OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE OF THE PHILPPINE ISLANDS
8 (1922).

78. Gen. Orders No. 58, supra note 70, § 6.
79. Id.
80. Id. § 6(3).
81. The correct format for a complaint was:

The United States against [. ,
In the Court of __ , for __ , Province of._ , the _ day of..,

19-
1 is accused by the undersigned of the crime of (giving its legal appellation,

such as murder, arson, robbery, or the like, or designating it as a felony or
misdemeanor), committed as follows:

That said F __ ] on the _ -- day of - , 19 , at the - of
Province of _, (here set forth the acts or ommissions [sic] charged as an offence),
contrary to the statute in such case made and provided.

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 191

The last substantive requirement for the complaint that General
Orders No. 58 introduced was that it be filed in the correct jurisdiction. In
technical terms, jurisdiction "is the power conferred by law upon ajudge
or court to try a case, the cognizance of which belongs to them
exclusively."82 A court's jurisdiction was generally determined by two
main factors: the geographic limits over which the court presided and the
type of action-civil or criminal.83

The final change in the filing of a complaint that the Americans
instituted via General Orders No. 58 was that the accuser had to file a
separate complaint for each offense charged. Under the Spanish system, the
prosecution could file one complaint for multiple offenses. Otis determined
that the Spanish procedure was cumbersome but concurred that one
complaint could charge an offense with more than one act as long as the
acts were related.84

Subsequent to the filing of a complaint, the new system of procedure
mandated a preliminary examination to determine if the arrest of the
offenders was warranted."5 At that time, a justice of the peace heard the
depositions of the prosecution and his/her witnesses. The Americans
shifted the burden of proof and production of evidence to the prosecution
so that it was up to the accuser to produce sufficient evidence to convict 6

at the preliminary examination. Thus, under General Orders No. 58, the
defendant was presumed innocent until proven guilty, increasing the
burden on the prosecutionY

The new legal philosophy represented a dramatic shift from the
Spanish system. Protection of the rights of the accused became a
paramount consideration in this system of criminal procedures. Only if the
Justice of the Peace agreed that the evidence before him was satisfactory

(Signed)-

Gen. Orders No. 58, supra note 70, § 8.
82. GUEVARA, supra note 77, at 14.
83. Currently, in the United States, determining jurisdiction is a much more complicated

process and encompasses other factors, but during the American years in the Philippines only these
two requirements existed. See JOHN J. COU IEr A-, Cvai.PRocmtEru CASES AND MATERmuALS 65-
195 (6th ed. 1993).

84. For example, armed robbery was one offense and needed only one complaint: robbery
with a gun rather than possession of a weapon and stealing.

85. Gen. Orders No. 58, supra note 70, §§ 13-14.
86. "Sufficient evidence to convict" was the standard used for most American criminal trials

at the time.
87. Fisher, supra note 38, at 41.



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LA W

and provided reasonable grounds for the alleged offender's arrest did he
issue a warrant for the arrest."8

Under the U.S. Code, after the accused was arrested, he appeared
before the Justice of the Peace who explained the allegations of the
complaint. In contrast to the Spanish system, the offender consequently
knew all the charges against him. This new Code of Criminal Procedure
offered greater equality between the accuser and the accused.

Following an arrest, the Justice of the Peace determined bail. The
American judicial system in the Philippines permitted an offender to be
released on bail, provided he was not charged with a capital offense.89

Under the Spanish system, the accused languished in prison until his case
went to trial. Yet even under General Orders No. 58, the accused was not
permitted a bail hearing. Instead, the Justice of the Peace set bail according
to the offense charged and the danger to society the offender posed.

If, at any stage during these proceedings, the offender believed he was
being wrongly detained, he could petition the court for a writ of habeas
corpus. Although American courts in the Philippines did not grant these
writs liberally, they did review each individual request. 90

After the Justice of the Peace had published the amount of the
defendant's bail, the parties agreed on a trial date. General Orders No. 58
guaranteed the right to a speedy trial.9' In direct response to their criticism
of the inefficiency of the Spanish judicial system, the Philippine
Commissioners borrowed this section of General Orders No. 58 on a
speedy trial from the U.S. Constitution.' "Speedy" is not defined either in
the code of procedure for the Philippines or in the U.S. Constitution but
case law is useful here in explaining the meaning of this term. In 1908, the
Philippine trial court recessed a homicide trial for six months, and the U.S.
Supreme Court held that this adjournment did not violate the right to a
speedy trial.93 Thus "speedy" could be interpreted rather loosely.

The most significant American innovations in the Philippine legal
system entailed providing rights to the defendant at trial and allowing trials
to be open to the public.94 In their judicial system, the Spanish colonials
had not permitted the accused to be involved or confronted during the trial

88. Gen. Orders No. 58, supra note 70, § 13.
89. Organic Act of the Philippines, ch. 1369, 32 Stat. 691 (1902).
90. ALBERT, supra note 22, at 410.
91. Gen. Orders No. 58, supra note 70, § 15(7).
92. U.S. CONST. amend. VI.
93. United States v. Pellejera, 17 Phil. 587 (1909).
94. Gen. Orders No. 58, supra note 70, § 15.

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 193

process.95 Thus, prior to American occupation, the Filipinos were
unfamiliar with processes such as cross-examination and the right to
appear in person to defend oneself.

General Orders No. 58 secured the defendant's right to have an
attorney present at the trial, a right also guaranteed to defendants in the
United States legal system. 6 If the defendant were unable to employ an
attorney, the court would appoint one for him. The Filipino Chief Justice
of the Philippines summarized the changes that ensued when the
Commission instituted General Orders No. 58:

This law, based upon the accusatory system, has abolished the
inquisitorial period so derogatory of the rights of the accused,
and which was the foundation of our former criminal procedure;
the time formerly taken up by this inquisitorial system without
the right of intervention on part of the accused which at times
would be prolonged for years, dependent upon the difficulty of
investigation, has been saved; the long period of preventive
punishment suffered by many persons during the long summary
examination is now avoided, which said examination was
carried on only for the purpose of investigating the commission
of a crime and whether any person was guilty thereof; the new
procedure provided for a complete equality between the accuser
and the accused, between the prosecution carried on by the
Government and the defense of his personal liberty and security
interposed by the defendant; initiation, fully provides all that is
necessary for a complete defense, and is an absolute safeguard
of personal security; this undoubtedly, is the greatest benefit
conferred upon the inhabitants of this country.'

General Orders No. 58 also introduced the concepts of demurrer and
plea bargaining to the Philippine judicial system. A defendant demurs
when he or she admits all the allegations of the complaint but asserts that
such allegations are insufficient to form a cause of action rendering the
plaintiff's case invalid. A plea, on the other hand, is a direct response to the
charge. General Orders No. 58 offered four types of pleas: "(1) guilty; (2)
not guilty; (3) a former judgment of conviction or acquittal of the offense
charged, which may be pleaded either with or without the plea of guilty;

95. LEROY, supra note 36, at 108.
96. Gen. Orders No. 58, supra note 70, § 15(1).
97. LEROY, supra note 36, at 279-280 (vol. 2).



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

[and] (4) once in jeopardy, which may be pleaded with or without a plea
of guilty.,"

A defendant, who offers a guilty plea may, at any time before judgment on
the plea, withdraw it and substitute a not guilty plea instead. Following the
plea, the defendant proceeds to trial.

B. Right to a Jury Trial And The Status of The Philippines During
The Schurman Commission Era

Trials in early twentieth-century Philippines resembled those in the
United States at the time though they lacked jury trials, a traditional
symbol of American democracy. The Report of the Philippines to the
President in 1900 indicated that the Commission originally intended to
give the Filipinos the right of a jury trial. The authors wrote that "criminal
procedure under the Spanish codes is arbitrary and not in accordance with
rules prevailing either in Federal or State systems. In due time it should be
modified. There should be trial by jury and many other changes." 99 Yet
although "many other changes" did take place, the Americans never
implemented jury trials in the Philippines.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a jury trial for all
criminal offenses."° The Sixth Amendment declares that "in all criminal
prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial,
by an impartial jury."' ' Permitting Filipinos this right meant the U.S.
Constitution would have to apply to the colony, for neither General Orders
No. 58 nor any other laws the Americans introduced addressed the issue of
a jury trial. The dilemma for the United States was twofold. The
Constitution gives Congress the power to govern all territories legitimately
acquired."1° Yet should Congress be bound by the Constitution in devising
legislation for these territories and compelled to offer the civil rights
implicit in the Constitution to the residents of these territories? Americans
in the early twentieth century diverged in their response to this question.

Two sides arose to debate these issues--those Americans and Filipino
ilustrados who supported the "benevolent assimilation" policy and their

98. Gen. Orders No. 58, supra note 70, § 24.
99. REPORT OF THE PHILIPPINE COMMISSION, supra note 27, at 125.
100. U.S. CONST. amend. VI.
101. Id.
102. Id. art. IV, § 3.

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHIUPPINES 195

opponents who were often associated with the anti-imperialist movement
that had formed in response to American colonization of the Philippines.

Supporting the policy of "benevolent assimilation" were those
Americans who had originally intended to remain in the Philippines only
for a few years or until the Filipinos were capable of self-government. This
group included American Commissioners, politicians, and businessmen in
the Philippines and the United States, whose initial ideas of withdrawing
from the archipelago ended when they perceived the opportunities
available for personal advancement. Most ilustrados supported the policy
of "benevolent assimilation" because they recognized the potential benefits
American colonization could offer them. The ilustrados expected and
received political and judicial power in exchange for their assistance to the
colonial regime. In a curious symbiosis, both American officials and
Filipino ilustrados may have capitalized upon their shared perception that
ordinary Filipinos were somehow incapable of self-government.

These attitudes permitted officials such as William Howard Taft to
justify American colonial policies, including depriving the Filipinos of the
right to a trial by jury. In fact, in 1901, expressing the sentiments of most
American colonists in the archipelago as well as the elite Filipinos, Taft
said

I have not considered it advisable to introduce any fads like trial
by jury of your peers into my administration. Plain straight-
forward dealing is my motto. A Filipino at his best has only
learned half his duty to mankind. He can be tried but he can't
try hisfellow man. It takes him too long. But in time I hope to
have them trained to apoint where they can be good men and
true at the quest.'0 3

lustrado Benito Legarda, an attorney himself, echoed these attitudes
in a letter to President McKinley. He wrote that the Filipinos were
incapable of self-government for "they are undoubtedly without political
preparation, totally ignorant, and do not know what is good for them,"'"
implying that they were incapable of participating in a judicial system
based on the principle of trial by jury.

In the early twentieth century, many Americans and elite Filipinos
perceived the average Filipino as occupying a lower rung on the

103. ML DOOLEY RErmERS:THE INr-RoAL MEMOIRS OFF MYPERDUNNE294, (Pip
Dumne, ed. 1963) (emphasis added) (hereinafter MR. DOOLEY Re,,mE.Rs].

104. MAY, supra note 1, at 27.



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

evolutionary ladder. In fact, the official 1903 census conducted in the Sulu
Zone during American occupation 5 distinguished "between the 'civilized'
and the 'wild' inhabitants of the Philippine Islands,"'" with the 'civilized'
representing any Westerners who lived in Sulu and the 'wild' the
indigenous inhabitants of the island. A U.S. Army General stationed in the
Philippines wrote of the inhabitants of Sulu: "they are essentially different
people from us in thought, word and action and their religion will be a
serious bar to any efforts towards Christian civilization.""' 7 As Edward
Said explained in his work on Orientalism, imperialists often perceived

European identity as a superior one in comparison with all non-
European peoples and cultures. There is in addition the
hegemony of European ideas about the Orient, themselves
reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness,
usually overriding the possibility that a more independent, or
more skeptical thinker might have had different views on the
matter. 108

American colonists often denigrated Philippine culture in order to
justify their efforts to Westernize the Filipinos."° On occasion, American
colonial officials stationed in the Philippines perpetuated myths about the
Filipinos by grouping them together and attributing negative characteristics
to them in general terms. Their writings about the reputed backwardness
of Asian societies served to justify their decision not to introduce jury trials
to the early American-occupied Philippines. Philippine Commissioner
Bernard Moses characterized the Filipinos as being "a stage of civilization
distinctly lower than that of the civilized peoples of the West."'"10 James A.
LeRoy, Secretary to Commissioner Worcester, summarized these Western
attitudes in a passage from his book on Filipino life in the early twentieth
century:

there is a certain school of experts which maintains that
Orientals are not only practically different in many ways to-day

105. The Sulu Zone had, and still has, the largest number of Muslim Filipinos in the
archipelago.

106. GOWING, supra note 2, at 45.
107. Id.
108. EDWARD W. SAID, ORIENTALiSM. 7 (1979).
109. BRUNOLASKER, PEOPLES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA 23 (1944).
110. U.S. PHILIPPINE COMMISSION, 2 REPORT OF THE PHILIPPINE COMMISSION TO THE

PRESIDENT 882 (1902).



1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 197

from the dominant peoples of the Occident, but that they are
inherently different beings, having a mental constitution not
really to be understood by Westerners, and capable of 'modem
progress,' as the Westerner views progress, only to a limited
degree, and under the guidance of Occidental mentors."'

Asserting that Orientals were incapable of "modem progress" on their
own, these Americans could justify intrusion on the Philippines as a means
of teaching the natives ways to overcome their backward way of life. Many
colonials asserted that, with Western influence and guidance, the native
societies could achieve a higher level of civilization. Philippine
Commissioner Luke Wright wrote that "the great mass of them [Filipinos]
care but little under what form of government they live, and the educated
and intelligent among them as a rule recognize their utter inability to
maintain an independent government of their ovn.""'

Partially in response to such attitudes and policies in the Philippines,
an anti-imperialist movement arose in the United States. Its members
challenged the view that Filipinos were unprepared for such constitutional
rights as trial by jury. Composed of a wide and varied membership from
Republican Senator George Frisbee Hoar of Massachusetts"' to soldiers
stationed in the Philippines, such as Lieutenant John D. Ford, U.S.N., and
Brigadier General Charles A. King, 4 the anti-imperialists argued that the
Filipinos were indeed sufficiently competent to administer their own
affairs. After a visit to the Philippines in the early 1900's, Congressman
John Franklin Shafroth of Colorado wrote that "there are very few people
who are not capable of self-government.""' 5 The anti-imperialists thus
championed the extension of the right to trial by jury to the Filipinos,
setting the stage for a lengthy legal and political struggle over the issue.

American colonial officials and the anti-imperialists were at odds on
the issue of trial by jury. In debating whether the Filipinos ought to be
permitted this right, both sides looked to American case law precedent to

111. JAoMs A. LERoY, THE PitUPPnqES ciRcA 1900: PHPPINELiFE IN TOWN AND COUNTY
290(1905).

112. H. W. BRANDS, BOUNDTO ENPIRE: THE UNI'ED STATES AND THE PHILIPPINES 68 (1992).
113. Stuart C. Miller, Our Mflai of 1900: Americans in the Philippine Insurrection, in

AE imcANExPANsioNis M;THECmrncALIssuEs 106 (Marilyn Blatt Young, ed. 1973).
114. For anti-imperialist attitudes among soldiers, see ORAWILiAMS, ORINTAt,.AMErUcA:

OFFiciAL AND AtumrNrnc REcoRDs OF THE DEALNGS OF THE UNITED STATES \vT THE NATIVE
ANDT-mEzFORzMERRuLES (1899).

115. Congressman John Franklin Shafroth, Can the Filipinos Govern Themselves? A Letter
From Manila 3-4 (exact date unknown).



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

bolster their arguments. Drawing on a case from 1845, proponents of jury
trials argued that because the United States had acquired the Philippines,
American rather than Spanish laws must apply. In this case, the U.S.
Supreme Court held that "every nation acquiring territory, by treaty or
otherwise, must hold it subject to the constitution and laws of its own
government and not according to those of the government ceding it. ' '" 6

To refute this assertion, members of the Philippine Commission and
the ilustrados cited a later case, responding that so long as existing native
laws were not in conflict with the United States Constitution or other U.S.
laws, the foreign laws could remain in place." 7 A region had to have solely
American laws only if it became a U.S. territory and was no longer a
foreign country. In continuing to defend the absence of jury trials in the
Philippines, some American colonial officials asserted that the Spanish had
not instituted such a system and thus no precedent existed in the Islands.
The Filipinos never had experienced trials with juries and, therefore, the
Americans were not depriving them of this right.' 18

In 1901, members of Congress discussed the status of the Philippines
and its criminal procedure with a brief mention of trial by jury in reference
to treason within the Philippines. Reflecting the interests of both the
Americans in the Philippines and the ilustrados, Elihu Root, the U.S.
Secretary of War at the time, supported a bill which he hoped Congress
would adopt for the Philippines. It declared that any individual found guilty
of treason would be imprisoned and sentenced to hard labor for no less
than five years in addition to a fine of not less than $10,000."'

Senator George Hoar, an anti-imperialist from Massachusetts,
objected to this harsh punishment. He explained that to be guilty of treason
in the United States a person must conspire against his own government.
Since a Filipino charged with treason was actually reacting against foreign
rule, such severe punishment was cruel and unusual. 2' In addition, he
pointed out that the standard for treason in the two countries differed. In
the United States, treason consisted of "actual levying war against the
Government or giving aid and comfort to the enemies, while treason in the
Philippine Islands is a very different thing,"'' since mere advocacy of
independence was considered treasonous. Continuing, he wrote that, at

116. Pollard's Lessee v. Hogan, 3 How. 212, 225 (1845) (emphasis added).
117. Ely's Administrator v. United States, 171 U.S. 220 (1898).
118. Fisher, supra note 38, at 115.
119. 57 CONG. REC. S1394 (1901).
120. Id. S1395
121. Id.

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 199

least in the United States, "the offense both of the traitor and of the person
charged with misprision of treason is to be tried by a jury of peers and
fellow-citizens of the person charged and in a district previously
ascertained where the offense was committed."'" He implied that the
Americans should offer the Filipinos the same rights and privileges that
they offered their own people rather than imposing harsher punishments,
without recourse to trial by jury, on the indigenous Filipinos.

As the debate continued, the senators began to argue about the
applicability of the Constitution to the Philippines. In 1901, Senator Joseph
B. Foraker of Ohio explained that, as the ilustrados attested, most lawyers
and judges in the Philippines did not understand some of the rights
guaranteed to U.S. citizens in the Constitution, such as trial by jury. Thus,
he suggested, it would be impractical to proffer these rights in the
Philippines.

C. The Philippine (Taft) Commission and the Philippine Assembly
(1901-1907)

The period of military rule finally ended in 1901 when the U.S.
Congress passed the Spooner Amendment'1 (which transferred power over
the Philippine Islands from the President of the United States, as
Commander-in-Chief, to the Congress and made the Governor-General the
sole executive authority in the Philippines). 24 The amendment provided
that:

all military, civil, and judicial powers necessary to govern the
Philippine Islands . . . shall, until otherwise provided by
Congress, be vested in such person or persons and shall be
exercised in such manner as the President of the United States
shall direct, for the establishment of civil government and for
maintaining and protecting the inhabitants of said Islands in the
full enjoyment of their liberty, property, and religion."

President McKinley, still under the impression that the Filipinos were
incapable of self-government, commissioned the Second Philippine
Commission in 1901 to work with the ilustrados in administering and

122. Id. (emphasis added)
123. Harvey, supra note 52, at 75.
124. ADMINIS"RATIVE CODE, supra note 64, at 59.
125. 56 CONG. REc. 763 (1901).



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

"civilizing" the Philippine Islands. Appointing William Howard Taft, Dean
C. Worcester, Luke E. Wright, Henry C. Ide, and Bernard Moses, he chose
new commissioners with the exception of Dean Worcester, the sole
holdover. This new agency became known as the Taft Commission after
its president, William Howard Taft.

In his instructions to the Taft Commission, McKinley emphasized that
the government of the Philippines should be established for "the happiness,
peace, and prosperity of the people of the Philippine Islands."'26 He
advised them that certain principles such as life and liberty were essential
to a strong government and thus had to be instilled in the Filipino culture.
As he had with the Schurman Commission, McKinley instructed the new
Commissioners that they were in the Philippines mainly to insure that no
injustice occurred. He advised them that they should refrain from making
any substantial changes in the laws unless the existing laws violated
American ideals ofjustice." Taft, in turn, professed that his mission in the
Philippines was to "educate them slowly in the ways and customs of the
country [the United States]. 128

In its first major legislation for the Islands, the U.S. Congress passed
the Organic Act of the Philippine Islands or the Philippine Bill of 1902
("Organic Act"). This Actformally shifted the government of the
Philippines from military to civilian rule. The U.S. Congress organized a
judicial system which included the Supreme Court and numerous lower
courts down to the municipal level.129 The most "Filipinized" branch of the
central government, i.e. the court system, included the Chief Justice, two
indigenous Justices of the Supreme Court, 30 and a majority of native
judges in the municipal courts.'3 The Americans permitted the Justice of
the Peace courts to remain and installed Filipino justices to head these
courts. Although there were some Filipinos within the judicial apparatus,
the majority of higher-placed judges were Americans.13 1 In addition, those
Filipinos within the system were primarily representative of the elite upper
class, the ilustrados. The American officials did not consider that Filipinos
would be concerned about which of the indigenous people they selected to

126. President McKinley, Instructions of the President to the Second Philippine Commission,
in WORCESTER, supra note 35, at 795.

127. Id. at 795.
128. MR. DOOLEY REMEMBERS, supra note 103, at 294.
129. REPORT OF THE PHILIPPINE COMMISSION, supra note 27, at 83.
130. MALCOLM, supra note 24, at 228.
131. SALAMANCA, supra note 47, at 72.
132. Id. at 72.

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 201

be on the court. They assumed that provided the Justice was Filipino, the
people would be satisfied regardless of the justice's ruling style or class.'33

The U.S. President appointed justices to the Philippine Supreme
Court, and the Governor-General selected justices for the Courts of First
Instance and the Justice of the Peace. The U.S. Supreme Court was the
highest appellate court for criminal and civil cases in the Philippines.
However, few cases reached this level since the Supreme Court dealt only
with constitutional issues and the Constitution did not apply to the
archipelago.

In reaching decisions, common law courts in the Philippines studied
prior U.S. case law either in the Philippines, United States or other U.S.
territories. The courts considered local laws when there was no existing
common law on the issue and when the traditions did not conflict with
American beliefs. Prior Spanish decisions were only persuasive authority,
not precedent, and did not preclude local courts from exercising
independent judgment."3

Like the Spanish rulers, the American colonial administration
permitted the numerous municipal courts to resolve most civil cases, but
criminal cases had to be argued in front of American justices. The
Commission permitted the courts to continue to employ the Spanish laws
in both civil and criminal cases but justices had to examine and apply
American procedural law in the conduct of criminal trials."'s Any laws
inconsistent with American beliefs had already been excised from the
Philippine law codes. The Americans found that the main flaw during the
Spanish regime was that laws were poorly administered and believed that
the shortcomings were not in the laws themselves.

D. Right to a Jury Trial During The Taft Commission Era

Although the Organic Act and the new judicial system left the writ of
habeas corpus intact and, in theory, offered a host of other Constitutional
rights and freedoms, 36 it failed either to extend or to deny the right of a
jury trial to the people in the Philippines. The Act, however, stated
explicitly that Section 1891 of the U.S. Revised Statutes of 1878 did not

133. Id. at 31. Once again these attitudes reflected the Orientalist beliefs prevalent among
Americans at this time.

134. George A. Malcolm, Philippine Law, 11 ILL L.REV. 331,391-396 (1916).
135. Gen. Orders No. 8, Office of the U.S. Military Governor in the Philippine Islands (1898).
136. Organic Act of the Philippines, ch. 1369, 32 Stat. 691 (1902).



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LW

apply to the Philippines. 37 Section 1891 provided that "the Constitution
and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall
have the same force and effect within all the organized Territories, and in
every Territory hereafter organized as elsewhere within the United
States."' 38

Thus, although the right to a trial by jury could not be accepted in the
Philippines as "implied law," nor could this right be automatically
discounted because Congress had not specifically indicated its views on the
issue.

In 1904, a U.S. Supreme Court case, Dorr v. United States, addressed
the issue of whether, in the absence of a Congressional statute expressly
conferring the right, a trial by jury was necessary if the defendant in a U.S.
territory had made such a request.139 In this case, the justices explained that
Americans went to the Philippines to teach Filipinos how to govern
themselves and during times of "pupilage, territories and dependencies do
not constitute a sovereign power."" Therefore, Congress had the power
to establish and dispose of rules for the territories' as well as the right to
enact laws for these regions without subjecting them to U.S. restrictions.'
Congress had thus acted within its Constitutional mandate in not extending
the right of a trial by jury to the Philippine Islands. The right to a jury trial
was not, the Court continued, a fundamental one such as the right to a
speedy and public trial. It was rather a method that the state had the option
of employing.43 Since President McKinley had not sanctioned a jury trial
system in his instructions to the Commission nor formally extended such
a privilege to the archipelago, the Court determined that a trial in the
Philippines need not include a jury."

To justify not instituting jury trials, the Philippine Commission drew
upon another U.S. Supreme Court case in 1905. Deliberating over the
status of Alaska,'45 the Court distinguished between a territory of the
United States and a territory belonging to the United States. The Court
defined a territory of the United States as an area incorporated into the

137. Id. at 1.
138. Id.
139. Dorr v. United States, 195 U.S. 138 (1904).
140. George Malcolm, The Status of the Philippines, 14 MicH. L. REV. 529, 536 (1916).
141. Dorr, 195 U.S. at 139.
142. Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 (1900)
143. Dorr, 195 U.S. at 144.
144. Id. at 145.
145. Rasmussen v. United States, 197 U.S. 516 (1905).



1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 203

United States but not yet a state, such as Alaska or New Mexico. Since the
Philippines and Puerto Rico, on the other hand, were territories governed
by the United States and were not slated to be incorporated as states, they
only belonged to the United States" 6 The Philippine Commission used this
decision as a rationale for permitting trials without juries: as a territory that
only belonged to the United States, the Philippines could not embrace the
Constitution as its own. American lawmakers thus avoided the
Constitutional requirement of a right to a jury trial in the Philippines.

Congress made its final judgment on this issue after discussions with
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, the ilustrado,
Cayetano Arellano. In a hearing before the U.S. Secretary of War and
certain Congressmen in 1905, Chief Justice Arellano stated that:

even among the class of persons in these Islands who are fairly
well educated, I do not believe that we could expect them to
have the stability of judgment which would be necessary for
them to pass fairly and justly upon the questions that a jury
would have to decide. 147

This judgment pleased the American colonial officials in the
Archipelago. As previously noted, many colonial Americans believed that
most Filipinos did not have the intellectual capacity or cultural
sophistication to understand the intricacies of judging their peers in trial.
Or perhaps they simply used this rationale to deny Filipinos a right integral
to the American democratic system of justice. Historian Peter Stanley
noted that many American colonists considered the Filipinos to be
"ignorant, superstitious, and credulous in remarkable degree" and that
"social regeneration was essential."'" In fact, Taft wrote in 1901 that "no
Filipino judiciary could have any adequate conception of what practical
civil liberty is." '49 Naturally, such attitudes served to justify this
undermining of a significant feature of Philippine legal sovereignty. It also
perhaps offered a rationale for Americans to stray considerably from their
original intention of remaining in the Philippines just long enough to
establish a system of self-government.

146. Odlin,supra note 55, at 330-331.
147. U.S. Philippine Commission, Hearings Before the Secretary of War and the Congressional

Party Accompanying Him to the Philippine Islands 103 (1905).
148. STANLEY, supra note 26, at 83.
149. Taft Papers, Philippine Commission, Library of Congress (May 26, 1901).



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OFASIAN LAW

Although not even Americans in the Philippines were permitted trial
by jury,"' their U.S. citizenship did permit them preferential treatment
within the legal system. Americans living in the colony who committed
criminal offenses were not sentenced to the same punishments as their
Filipino counterparts were for similar crimes. For example, Lieutenant
Preston Brown of the U.S. Army was supposed to be discharged from
service and sentenced to five years in prison for murdering a Filipino. The
court, on review, further decreased this extraordinarily mild sentence. It
permitted him to remain in the service but his pay was reduced by fifty
percent for nine months, and he was shifted down thirty five places on the
promotion list. By contrast, the sentences for Filipinos were never
shortened. 

15

After assuming office in 1901, the Taft Commission initiated many
changes in the laws of the Philippines but retained General Order No. 58,
which remains the basis of the existing Code of Criminal Procedure of the
Philippines. Although numerous revisions have taken place, Philippine
criminal procedure today is modeled on the American procedure of the
early 1900's.152

From 1901 to 1907, the U.S. Congress gradually enacted laws that
brought the Philippine legal structure closer to the U.S. system. Though the
U.S. Constitution did not apply to the Philippines, the Filipinos were
accorded many of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and, in
particular, the Bill of Rights (with the exception of the right to a trial by
jury). Despite the absence of jury trials, the early American era was
renowned for the introduction of individual freedoms, sparking a modem
Filipino historian to remark that in the early American era "the Filipinos
enjoyed the era of freedom -- freedom of religious worship, freedom of the
press, freedom to assemble peaceably for the redress of grievances,
freedom to change domicile, and freedom of speech.' 5 3

Capitalizing on Orientalist beliefs similar to those adhered to by the
European colonials, the American colonials justified both their occupation
and their restriction of individual rights, including the right to trial by jury.
With the assistance of the ilustrados, American officials introduced a

150. Don" v. United States, 195 U.S. 138 (1904).
151. Miller, supra note 113, at 113. Discussion of punishments in the colonial Philippines is

confined to this small section since neither General Order No. 58 nor the Organic Act address this
aspect of Filipino law, making it difficult to obtain any information regarding punishments at this
time.

152. MELQtIADES J. GAMBOA, AN INTRODUcTION TO PHILIPPINE LAW 86 (6th ed. 1955).
153. TEODORO A. AGONCILLO & MILAGROS C. GUERRERO, HISTORY OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE

430(1970).

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 205

formal code of criminal procedure to the Islands shortly after their arrival
in an initial attempt to instruct the Filipinos in "civilized" laws. For more
than thirty years following their arrival, they continued thus to "civilize the
natives."

IV. A BRIEF LOOK AT THE END OF THE AMERICAN ERA AND THE POST
INDEPENDENCE YEARS

A. Government Under the Jones Bill (October 16, 1916-November
15, 1935)

As part of his campaign in 1912, democratic presidential candidate
Woodrow Wilson agreed to grant independence to the Philippines as soon
as he was confident that the Filipinos were capable of sustaining a stable
government on their own.

Almost immediately after assuming office, President Wilson sent an
advisor to the Philippines to assess the country's readiness for self-
government. Although Wilson's advisor returned with a "glowing report
on the Filipinos' capacity to govern themselves," the U.S. Congress did not
grant the Filipinos partial self-government power until four years after
reviewing this report to Wilson.'4

Under pressure from a few liberal U.S. Congressmen and the Filipino
people for greater independence, the Congress passed the Jones Law in
August of 1916. Seeking to satisfy the Filipinos and to quell criticism,
Congress passed this bill which opened by noting that "it is desirable to
place in the hands of the people of the Philippines as large a control of their
domestic affairs as can be given them without, in the meantime, impairing
the exercise of the rights of sovereignty by the people of the United
States.

155

Congress thus replaced the American-dominated Philippines
Commission with a legislature that included an all-Filipino Senate and a
House of Representatives with popularly elected officials. The U.S.
government asserted that it worked to train more Filipinos so they would
be equipped to run their own government.' 6 Even though there were more
Filipinos in legislative and judicial positions, the American Governor-
General retained veto power and the right to appoint all Cabinet officials.

154. Id at 343.
155. MALcOLi, supra note 24, at 231.
156. FEUcirAs Y. PADILLA THEPHUPINE GOVEMRMrE" (Evotm: PRE-SPANISHTO THE

AQuiNo GOVERMENT) AND THE 1987 CONSTITUTION (wi ANNOTATIONS) 37 (1987).



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

Moreover, American justices comprised the majority on the Philippine
Supreme Court, and the highest court of appeals remained the U.S.
Supreme Court. Thus the Jones Law, though a gradual step towards an
independent Philippines, still left most of the decision-making power in the
hands of Americans.

B. Commonwealth and Independence

The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 created the Commonwealth of the
Philippines and provided for independence from U.S. control in 1946. On
July 1, 1940, the Supreme Court of the Philippines promulgated the Rules
of the Court (which included rules on criminal procedure codified from
General Order No. 58 as Rules 106 to 122).57

These Rules of the Court remained unchanged until 1964, when the
Supreme Court issued the Revised Rules of the Court with Rules 110 to
127 entitled "Criminal Procedure." Although the court promulgated the
new rules to incorporate post-independence case law and court rulings
since 1940, the rules differed little from General Order No. 58. Instead, the
Rules refined the General Order. For example, the Revised Rules included
a provision indicating that a legitimate "ground for dismissal of... [a] case
is that the facts alleged in the information do not constitute an offense."'5 8

This rule emanated from a 1963 fraudulent mortgage case in which the
plaintiff's complaint failed to supply sufficient information to charge the
defendants with the offense.1 59 The Supreme Court also incorporated
People v. Plaza16 which permitted a party to amend a complaint at any
time before the defendant entered his or her plea.161 Therefore, even though
the Supreme Court issued new rules of criminal procedure, in reality, the
Court did not stray far from the substance of General Order No. 58.

C. The Marcos Years

1. The Early Years and Martial Law

Ferdinand Marcos assumed office as President of the Philippines in
1965, and in 1969 became the first president in the nation's history to be

157. FORTUNATO Guprr, JR., INNOVATIONS IN NEW CRIMINAL PROCEDURE 3 (1985).
158. Ceferino D. Villegas, Criminal Procedure, 39 PHIL L.J. 226 (1964).
159. People v. Sunpad, G.R. No. L-18747 (1963).
160. People v. Plaza, G.R. No. L-18819 (1963).
161. 1985 RULES ON CRIMINAL PROCEDURE [R. CRIM. PROC.] 113(7) (Nov. 22, 1984) (Phil.).

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE INPHILIPPINES 207

reelected. During the first few years of his rule, the Philippines experienced
a marked economic improvement, due in part to increased rice production
and export of a newly discovered strain of rice.'6' However, cultivating this
rice required expensive heavy machinery far beyond the means of the
average farmer. Thus only the wealthy landowners had the opportunity to
share in this increased prosperity. Reacting to rumors of amassed wealth
among the elite, Filipino students, farmers, and laborers began to rally
against Marcos in early 1969, and this violence escalated for the next three
years. In hopes of gaining control over the chaos in his country, Marcos
declared martial law in 1972, during which time no change occurred to the
Code of Criminal Procedure. Finally in 1981, Marcos lifted martial law and
approximately four years later, the Supreme Court issued its most recent
version of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

2. 1985 Code of Criminal Procedure

The Code of Criminal Procedure that governs present-day criminal
procedure in the Philippines was last revised in 1985.26 However, the 1985
Code barely changed the basic procedure that the Americans established
in 1900 through General Order No. 58. Instead, the additions slightly
altered the Code to incorporate societal changes consistent with existing
modem law. In his analysis of the existing Code, Francisco Ed Lim, a
scholar of Filipino criminal law, wrote that "a number of the changes
introduced by the new Rules have been adopted from existing statutes,
including the Constitution, and settled jurisprudence of the Supreme Court
on criminal procedure."' ' These changes included such specific revisions
as the following: (1) where to file a criminal complaint;'6 (2) how the state
could initiate action on the deceased's behalf when a victim of a sedition,
abduction, or rape who had no surviving relatives died before filing a
complaint; 66 and (3) how to incorporate the Luna v. Plaza case (1968)
(which held that the prosecution needed to present sufficient facts to the
judge to convince him or her that probable cause for arrest existed).' 67

162. Lela Garner Noble, Politics in the Marcos Era, in CRisis IThfEPIUIFiNES:ThffARcOs
ERAAND BEYOND 76 (John Bresnan ed. 1986).

163. RiCARDo J. FRANcIsco, CRmNAL PRocEDuRE RULES OF COURT IN THE PHILIPPINES,
RULE 110-127 2 (1994).

164. Francisco Ed Lim, The Old and New Rules on Criminal Procedure, 8 PHIL L. GAZEr E
14, (1985).

165. R. CRIM.PRoc. 110(1)(a)(b)) (Phil.).
166. Id. 110(5).
167. Lunav.Plaza, L-27511 26 SCRA 310 (1968).



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OF ASIAN LAW

The procedures for filing a criminal case in 1997 under the 1985 Code
remain almost the same as they were in 1900 under General Order No. 58.
After the offended party had filed a complaint, the local police conducted
an investigation to "determine (a) whether the crime was actually
committed, and (b) if so whether sufficient grounds exist justifying the
arrest of a suspect."'" If sufficient grounds existed following the pre-arrest
investigation, the police authorities took the suspect into custody, and the
prosecution began its preliminary investigation. As under General Order
No. 58, the 1985 Code of Criminal Procedure permits a suspect to be
released on bail except when charged with a capital offense. 69 The Code
requires the parties hold an arraignment and a pretrial conference in hopes
of settling the case through a plea bargain. Most cases are currently settled
in this manner. If a case is not resolved, however, the parties must proceed
to trial with at least two day notice prior to the proceedings. Based upon all
the evidence he or she has heard, a judge will enter a judgement within
three months "from the date of submission of the case."'' 70

As in General Order No. 58, in the 1985 Code of Criminal Procedure,
the rights of the accused are paramount. Rule 115 is devoted entirely to
these basic legal rights which included:

(a) to be presumed innocent until the contrary is proved beyond
a reasonable doubt; (b) to be informed of the nature and cause
of the accusation... ; (c) to be present and defend in person and
by counsel at every stage of the proceedings... ; (d) to testify
as a witness in his own behalf... ;(e) to be exempt from being
compelled to be a witness against himself; (f) to confront and
cross examine the witness against him . . . (g) to have
compulsory process issued to secure the attendance of witness
and production of other evidence on his behalf; (h) to have a
speedy, impartial and public trial; and (i) to have the right of
appeal in -all cases allowed and in the manner prescribed by
law. 171

Modem Philippine lawmakers adopted word for word the American
colonials' greatest innovation--the fundamental rights of the accused.

168. FRANcisco, supra note 163, at 5.
169. R. CRIM. PROC. 114(3) (Phil.).
170. FRANcisco, supra note 163, at 6.
171. R.CRIM.PROC. 115 (Phil.).

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPJNES 209

Although the 1985 Code offers many personal freedoms, it fails to
provide the accused with the right to a jury trial. It may be that the present-
day Filipino legal system unknowingly retains a few of the Orientalist
attitudes of the early American colonials, but more likely it is that trial by
jury would be inappropriate in current Filipino society.

Often, modem legal disputes are resolved outside of the court
systems. Instead of appealing to the court system to settle their
discrepancies, many Filipinos reconcile their difference "through 'amicable
settlement."'17 2 In his article focusing on the legal system of the rural
Philippine, Kit Machado, a scholar of Filipino legal history, explained that
many of the personal disputes that arise in the Philippines are settled
through alternative dispute resolution "outside of the state legal
institutions. 17'  He wrote that "most explanations of preference for
informal means of dispute-processing in ex-colonial third world states
stress cultural and social characteristics incompatible with the norms
underlying legal institutions introduced by Western imperial powers. Such
factors are clearly important in the prevalence of 'amicable settlement' in
the Philippines."'7 4 Thus, perhaps the Western concept of trial by jury is
"incompatible" with Filipino society and is a nonissue in the country's
legal structure.

V. CONCLUSION

An indigenous legal structure and a Spanish adaptation of Roman law
preceded the arrival of Americans in the Philippines. Seeking to dispel
hostility and possible armed resistance and perhaps to gain the support of
the Filipinos, Americans retained certain features of the indigenous and the
Spanish legal traditions while gradually introducing a common law legal
system. They initiated changes in civil marriage, a first step in an effort to
separate church and state, and then enacted a new criminal code of
procedure leaving the substantive Roman criminal law virtually untouched.
As late as 1910, the existing Spanish law was still prominent in the
American colonial judicial system. 175 The justices of the Philippine

172. Kit Machado, State Legal Institutions and 'Amicable Settlement' in the Rural Philippines,
in THE EIGHTH CONFERENCE, INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HISTORIANS OF ASIA: SELECTED
PAPERS 748 (Mohd. Amin Hassan & Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abd. Rahman eds. 1988).

173. Id. at751.
174. Id
175. See United States v. Laguna, 17 Phil. 532 (1910).



COLUMBIA JOURNAL OFASIANLAW

Supreme Court wrote that, "it means simply that that portion of Spanish.
[law] still survives. 176

Yet American political and economic interests demanded that a new
legal system and governmental structure be developed in the Philippines.
Although the Philippine Bill of Rights resembled the U.S. version,
American lawmakers deliberately excluded the right of trial by jury by
asserting that the Constitution applied only to territories incorporated into
the United States. American colonials feared that granting such
constitutional rights as a trial by jury might challenge U.S. control of the
archipelago. Sanctioning trial by a jury of one's peers would offer ordinary
Filipinos the right to determine the outcome of legal cases independent of
American overseers. Instead, American officials and Philippine ilustrados
dominated criminal and civil laws and procedures throughout the period
of U.S. colonial rule.

As historian Ruby Paredes asserted "in the policy making process, the
Americans had the power, but the ilustrados had the knowledge."' 77 A
scholar of colonial law added that colonial rule "was based ... upon a
delicate system of 'unequal bargains' ... between representatives of the
colonial powers at the periphery and the indigenous elites."'' 7 This
collaboration permitted American colonial officials the opportunity to
control the government in the Philippines without always firsthand
participation. The Americans de-emphasized their political and economic
motives and justified their occupation of the Islands as a "civilizing
mission" to rid the Filipinos of their "backwardness" and help them "make
progress." In their present state, the American imperialists explained, the
Filipinos were not capable of trial by jury. Drawing on the Archipelago's
history, the Americans also asserted that the Filipinos had never had a legal
system that operated with a jury, so that the colonial officials had not
deprived the Filipinos of an existing right.

In the early twentieth century, most Americans accepted this rationale
and did not perceive it to be an imperialist tactic or an abridgement of
Filipino legal sovereignty. In fact, as late as 1960, a University of
Wisconsin graduate student wrote in his M.S. Thesis, "occasionally, our
denial of the right of trial by jury has been criticized but this measure
seems well justified in view of the low educational level of the people and

176. Id., at 538.
177. Paredes, supra note 68, at 177.
178. W.J. Mommsen, Introduction, in EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND LAW, supra note 3, at 3.

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1997] COLONIAL ROOTS OF CRIAIINAL PROCEDURE IN PHILIPPINES 211

their centuries of different experience in trial by judge rather than jury."'"
Although the Philippines as a nation has changed dramatically since the
early American colonial years, some of the laws which the colonials
introduced, including the code of criminal procedure adopted in 1900,
remain virtually intact in 1997 without any reference to the right of trial by
jury.

179. Joseph James Corry, A Venture at Altruistic Imperialism: The United States in the
Philippine Islands From 1900 to 1910 37 (1960) (M.S. thesis, University of Wisconsin (Madison)).