Obstruction of Justice

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PENALIZING OBSTRUCTION OF APPREHENSION AND PROSECUTION OF CRIMINAL OFFENDERS

WHEREAS, crime and violence continue to proliferate despite the sustained

vigorous efforts of the government to effectively contain them;

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;

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:

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:

(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;

(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;

(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;

(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;

(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;

(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;

(g) soliciting, accepting, or agreeing to accept any benefit in

consideration of abstaining from, discontinuing, or impeding the

prosecution of a criminal offender;

(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; 

(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. cd

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.

Published in the Official Gazette, Vol. 79 No. 22 Page 3283 on May 30, 1983.