WHEREAS,
crime and violence continue to proliferate despite the sustained
vigorous efforts of the government to effectively contain them; chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
WHEREAS, to discourage public indifference or apathy towards the
apprehension and prosecution of criminal offenders, it is necessary to
penalize acts which obstruct or frustrate or tend to obstruct or
frustrate the successful apprehension and prosecution of criminal
offenders;chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND, E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines,
by virtue of the powers vested in me by law do hereby decree and order
the following:cralaw:red
Section 1. The penalty of prision correccional in its
maximum period, or a fine ranging from 1,000 to 6,000 pesos, or both,
shall be imposed upon any person who knowingly or willfully obstructs,
impedes, frustrates or delays the apprehension of suspects and the
investigation and prosecution of criminal cases by committing any of
the following acts: chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(a) preventing witnesses from testifying in any
criminal proceeding or from reporting the commission of any offense or
the identity of any offender/s by means of bribery, misrepresentation,
deceit, intimidation, force or threats;chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(b) altering, destroying, suppressing or concealing
any paper, record, document, or object, with intent to impair its
verity, authenticity, legibility, availability, or admissibility as
evidence in any investigation of or official proceedings in, criminal
cases, or to be used in the investigation of, or official proceedings
in, criminal cases; chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(c) harboring or concealing, or facilitating the
escape of, any person he knows, or has reasonable ground to believe or
suspect, has committed any offense under existing penal laws in order
to prevent his arrest, prosecution and conviction;chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(d) publicly using a fictitious name for the purpose
of concealing a crime, evading prosecution or the execution of a
judgment, or concealing his true name and other personal circumstances
for the same purpose or purposes;chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(e) delaying the prosecution of criminal cases by
obstructing the service of process or court orders or disturbing
proceedings in the fiscal's offices, in Tanodbayan, or in the
courts; chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(f) making, presenting or using any record, document,
paper or object with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to affect
the course or outcome of the investigation of, or official proceedings
in, criminal cases;chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(g) soliciting, accepting, or agreeing to accept any
benefit in consideration of abstaining from, discounting, or impeding
the prosecution of a criminal offender;chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(h) threatening directly or indirectly another with
the infliction of any wrong upon his person, honor or property or that
of any immediate member or members of his family in order to prevent
such person from appearing in the investigation of, or official
proceedings in, criminal cases, or imposing a condition, whether lawful
or unlawful, in order to prevent a person from appearing in the
investigation of or in official proceedings in, criminal cases;chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
(i) giving of false or fabricated information to
mislead or prevent the law enforcement agencies from apprehending the
offender or from protecting the life or property of the victim; or
fabricating information from the data gathered in confidence by
investigating authorities for purposes of background information and
not for publication and publishing or disseminating the same to mislead
the investigator or the court.
If any of the acts mentioned herein is penalized by any other law with
a higher penalty, the higher penalty shall be imposed.
Section 2. If any of the foregoing acts is committed
by a public official or employee, he shall in addition to the penalties
provided thereunder, suffer perpetual disqualification from holding
public office.
Section 3. This Decree shall take effect immediately.
Done in the City of Manila,
this 16th day of January, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and
eighty-one.
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