Fortunato Suarez vs Servillano Platon

G.R. No. 46371 – 69 Phil. 556 – Legal Ethics – Duty of the Prosecutor 

In May 1935, Atty. Fortunato Suarez was riding a train on his way to Calauag, Tayabas. Apparently he was very vocal and he was despising the abuses made by government officers. Incidentally, Lieutenant Vivencio Orais was aboard the train. Orais arrested Suarez and charged him with sedition. Orais however later moved for the dismissal of the case upon the instruction of his superior. Thereafter, Suarez filed a case against Orais for arbitrary detention. Provincial Fiscal Ramon Valdez moved for the dismissal of the case due to insufficiency of evidence. Suarez asked Valdez to inhibit and later asked for a special prosecutor to take his place as he alleged that Valdez does not have the courage to prosecute the case. Valdez was then replaced by special prosecutor Jacinto Yamzon who also found that there is insufficient evidence to prosecute the case. Eventually, the case was dismissed by Judge Servillano Platon on the ground that there is insufficiency of evidence. Suarez appealed the dismissal of the case but his appeal was denied on the ground that mandamus is the proper remedy. Hence, Suarez filed this Mandamus case to compel Platon to reinstate the case.

ISSUE: Whether or not the case should be reinstated.

HELD: No. The fiscals are well within their rights not to push through with the case if they find the evidence to be insufficient. The prosecuting officer is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence shall suffer.

Read full text here.