Prescription period for cyber libel is 1 year
MANILA — Cyber libel cases should be filed within a year upon the discovery of the complainant, the Supreme Court (SC) clarified in a decision released on Friday.
The decision promulgated by the high court’s third division on Oct. 11, 2023 said that the prescription period for cyber libel should be based on the Revised Penal Code (RPC), and not the Republic Act (RA) No. 3326 or an act that defined the duration of prescriptions not included in the RPC.
The SC laid down the new rule, which departed from the previous doctrine that adhered to a prescriptive period for cyber libel of 15 years after a petition of former lawyer Berteni Causing.
Causing contested the dismissal of his motion to squash to dismiss the cyber libel charge filed against him by former Rep. Ferdinand Hernandez (South Cotabato) on Dec. 16, 2020.
The former lawyer was indicted by the Quezon City Prosecutors Office for two counts of cyber libel, following a Facebook post on Feb. 4, 2019, and April 29, 2019, that accused Hernandez of allegedly pocketing P226 million worth of relief goods for Marawi evacuees.
On June 28, 2021, Causing filed a motion to quash before the Quezon City Regional Trial Court arguing that libel under the Cybercrime Prevention Act did not create any new crime but “merely recognized a computer system as another means of committing libel” as defined by the RPC.
Causing then argued that the prescription for the offense should be similar as defined by the RTC which indicated a one-year prescription period for libel.
However, the Quezon City RTC dismissed the motion, saying that the two cyber libel charges against Causing has not lapsed its prescription period. It also emphasized that the prescription would be determined on Act No. 3326, as there is no prescription period mentioned in the anticybercrime law.
“It pointed out that because cyber libel is penalized by RA 10175, which does not provide a prescriptive period for the said crime, the period must be determined based on Section 1 of Act No. 3326 in relation to Section 6 of RA 10175,” the resolution read.
The penalty for libel indicated in the RPC is prison correcional or six months to six years of possible imprisonment, but Section 6 of the Cybercrime Prevention Act stipulates that any offense punishable by the RPC will have a penalty of one degree higher.
Thus, applying Act No. 3326, which indicated 12-year imprisonment for crimes with penalties of imprisonment of six years or more, the Quezon City RTC concluded that the cyber libel’s prescription should be 12 years.
It could be recalled that the 12-year prescription has also been used by the Manila Regional Trial Court in convicting Nobel laureate and Rappler’s chief executive officer Maria Ressa for cyber libel in 2020.
However, the RTC further added that due to the “one penalty higher” provision on penalties under Section 6 of the Cybercrime Prevention Act makes the offense an “afflictive penalty” which makes the prescription of a crime be at 15 years, as indicated in the RPC.