Monfort vs. Salvatierra

Perjury under Article 183 of the Revised Penal Code requires a willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood, and a sworn statement made in good faith and in reliance on information supplied by another — later shown to be erroneous and promptly corrected — does not satisfy this element. Absent malice, the prosecutor's determination of no probable cause is not tainted by grave abuse of discretion and will not be disturbed on review.

Petitioners Antonio B. Monfort III and Ildefonso B. Monfort are children of the late Antonio H. Monfort, Jr., one of the original stockholders and incorporators of the Monfort Hermanos Agricultural Development Corporation (MHADC), an agricultural corporation whose corporate affairs are governed by its constitution and by-laws. The private respondents are stockholders of record of the same corporation and include the officers and directors who executed the questioned sworn statements. The MHADC by-laws provide that the annual stockholders' meeting and the election of the board of directors shall be held on the last Thursday of November of each year, a provision that assumed central importance because the 1996 calendar placed that Thursday on 28 November 1996. The corporation's General Information Sheets were prepared by its corporate accountant, Litonjua, Desabelle and Associates (LDA), and submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Antonio B. Monfort III and Ildefonso B. Monfort are the children of the late Antonio H. Monfort, Jr., one of the original stockholders and incorporators of the Monfort Hermanos Agricultural Development Corporation (MHADC), a corporation whose corporate records were prepared and maintained through the services of its corporate accountant, Litonjua, Desabelle and Associates (LDA). The private respondents — Ma. Antonia M. Salvatierra, Paul Monfort, Ramon H. Monfort, Jacqueline M. Yusay, Yvette M. Benedicto and Ester S. Monfort — are stockholders of record of the MHADC and included among its officers and directors. The controversy between the two groups centered on a single question of corporate fact: when the MHADC held its 1996 annual stockholders' meeting and elected its board of directors.

The dispute first surfaced in an earlier perjury complaint, docketed as I.S. No. 7883, which the petitioners filed against the private respondents. In that proceeding, the private respondents executed counter-affidavits dated 11 June 1998 in which they swore that the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting of the MHADC had been held on 16 October 1996 and that they had been elected as board directors during that meeting. The petitioners took the position that this was false, insisting that the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting had in fact been held on 27 November 1996, as stated in the 1996 General Information Sheet (GIS) accomplished by the MHADC and submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Iloilo Extension Office. The petitioners further pointed out that nothing in the 1996 GIS stated that an election of the board of directors took place on 16 October 1996.

On 28 October 1998, the petitioners filed a letter-complaint for perjury under Article 183 of the Revised Penal Code before the City Prosecutor of Cadiz against the private respondents, docketed as I.S. No. 8009. The complaint rested on the allegation that the private respondents had made false statements in their 11 June 1998 counter-affidavits in I.S. No. 7883. In response, the private respondents filed their joint counter-affidavits dated 9 December 1998 in I.S. No. 8009, in which they alleged that they were stockholders of record of the MHADC; that a stockholders' meeting had indeed been held on 16 October 1996 at which they were elected as board directors; that the MHADC's corporate accountant, LDA, was responsible for preparing the corporation's GIS; that LDA had made erroneous statements in the 1996 GIS concerning the date of the annual meeting and the composition of the board of directors; that LDA had admitted committing an honest error and had rectified the same by letter to the SEC informing it that the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting had been held on 16 October 1996 and not on 27 November 1996; and that what transpired on 27 November 1996 was not the annual stockholders' meeting but merely a special meeting of the board of directors. The private respondents accordingly argued that they could not be liable for perjury because the willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood — an essential element of the offense — was lacking.

Investigating Prosecutor Abraham E. Tionko issued a Resolution dated 14 April 1999 dismissing the letter-complaint for lack of probable cause. He observed that the statements in the 1996 GIS were indeed erroneous: the GIS stated that the stockholders' meeting and election of the board took place on 27 November 1996, yet if that information were true, it would have been impossible for some of the directors to have been elected on that date since they were already deceased at the time. He likewise noted that 27 November 1996 fell on a Wednesday, which was inconsistent with the MHADC by-laws requiring the annual stockholders' meeting to be held on the last Thursday of November — which in 1996 fell on 28 November. Investigator Tionko found that it was not impossible for the MHADC stockholders to have conducted their annual meeting on 16 October 1996; that there would have been a willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood only if no error had been committed in the preparation of the 1996 GIS; that private respondent Ramon H. Monfort, as Vice-President, was not aware of the errors when he subscribed and swore to the correctness of the GIS; that upon discovery of the errors LDA sent a letter to the SEC supplying the correct information; and that the matter amounted to mere negligence and imprudence on the part of Ramon H. Monfort, which cannot give rise to the crime of perjury. The complaint was accordingly dismissed.

Petitioners appealed to the Office of the Regional State Prosecutor for Region VI, but Regional State Prosecutor Vicente E. Aragona denied due course to the appeal in his Resolution dated 19 November 1999 on the ground that it had been filed out of time, and dismissed the motion for reconsideration in his Resolution dated 22 December 1999. Prosecutor Aragona sustained the private respondents' claim that the annual stockholders' meeting had been held on 16 October 1996 at the Agmac Building in Bacolod City, where they were elected as board directors, since this was supported by the notices of stockholders' meeting and the registry return receipt; he likewise affirmed that patent errors had been committed in the preparation of the 1996 GIS, which he characterized as an incorrect document of no probative value for establishing the true date of the annual meeting. The petitioners then elevated the matter to the Secretary of Justice, which dismissed the appeal in a Resolution dated 11 October 2000 for failure to show reversible error, and denied reconsideration in a Resolution dated 15 August 2001 for raising no new matter. The Court of Appeals affirmed both resolutions on 28 January 2005, holding that the Secretary of Justice had not committed grave abuse of discretion, that the private respondents had sufficiently established that a stockholders' meeting actually took place on 16 October 1996 at which they were elected as board directors, and that the willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood required by Article 183 was not present. Reconsideration was denied on 26 May 2005.

The lower tribunals' factual findings that bear on the Court's analysis were consistent: the 1996 GIS of the MHADC was patently erroneous and worthless as evidence of the true date of the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting; the errors were committed by LDA, the corporation's accountant, in the course of preparing the GIS; Ramon H. Monfort subscribed to the GIS as Vice-President without awareness of the errors at the time of signing; and upon discovery of the mistakes, LDA communicated the corrections to the SEC, which acknowledged them and made them part of the MHADC records.

• Willful and Deliberate Falsehood: Petitioners argued that the private respondents' insistence that the annual stockholders' meeting of the MHADC took place on 16 October 1996, and that they were elected as board directors during that meeting, constituted a willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood because it was not in harmony with the constitution and by-laws of the MHADC, which provide that the annual stockholders' meeting and the election of board directors shall be held every last Thursday of November of each year; the date 16 October 1996 was not the last Thursday of November in 1996.
• Incompetence of the Notices of Meeting: Petitioners maintained that the notices of meeting dated 1 October 1996 received by the private respondents were "incompetent" to prove that the annual stockholders' meeting and the election of directors of the MHADC took place on 16 October 1996.
• Intent Evident from the 1996 GIS: Petitioners claimed that the private respondents' intent to commit a willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood was evident in the 1996 GIS of the MHADC, which does not specify that an election of board directors took place on 16 October 1996.
• Belated and Self-Serving Correction: Petitioners averred that the correction of the erroneous entries in the 1996 GIS was made by LDA only after the lapse of two years from the execution of the document, and that this was a futile attempt to escape criminal liability because: (a) at the time the corrections were made, they had already charged Ramon H. Monfort with perjury and falsification of a private document for including in the 1996 GIS the names of stockholders who were already deceased as elected board directors; (b) the alleged errors were belied by the 1997 GIS filed by Ramon H. Monfort, which reiterated the names of the deceased stockholders as elected directors, showing not one but two mistakes; (c) the private respondents acted with ill motive in sending the correction letter through LDA, since at the time it was received by the SEC the City Prosecutor of Cadiz had already issued a resolution in I.S. No. 7883 finding probable cause for perjury against them; and (d) at the time of the correction, six or more criminal cases for perjury had already been filed by the petitioners against the private respondents, some still pending resolution.
• Effect of the Dismissed Civil Cases: Petitioners asseverated that the private respondents' statements in their 11 June 1998 counter-affidavits in I.S. No. 7883 showed a willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood because the private respondents used those same statements as bases for filing civil cases for forcible entry and delivery of personal property against the petitioners, which cases were eventually dismissed by the Supreme Court in G.R. No. 152542 and No. 155472; since the private respondents failed to establish that they were duly elected as board directors of the MHADC, they were not authorized to file those cases. From these premises, petitioners concluded that there was more than enough evidence to support a finding of probable cause for perjury.

• Absence of the Third Element: Respondent argued that they cannot be held liable for perjury because one of the elements of the offense under Article 183 of the Revised Penal Code is that the assertion of falsehood must be willful and deliberate; the terms "willful" and "deliberate" imply malice and evil intent in asserting falsehood, and this element is lacking in the case at bar.
• Stockholders of Record and the 16 October 1996 Meeting: Respondent maintained that they are stockholders of record of the MHADC and that a stockholders' meeting of the corporation was held on 16 October 1996, at which they were elected as board directors.
• Accountant's Error and Rectification: Respondent alleged that the MHADC's corporate accountant, LDA, was responsible for the preparation of the corporation's GIS; that LDA made erroneous statements in the 1996 GIS regarding the date of the annual stockholders' meeting and the persons composing the board of directors; that LDA had admitted having committed an honest error; and that LDA had rectified the same by submitting a letter to the SEC informing it that the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting was held on 16 October 1996 and not on 27 November 1996.
• Character of the 27 November 1996 Meeting: Respondent asserted that what transpired on 27 November 1996 was not the annual stockholders' meeting of the MHADC but merely a special meeting of the board of directors thereof.

• Probable Cause for Perjury: Whether the Court of Appeals erred in affirming the findings of the Secretary of Justice that there is no probable cause to indict the private respondents for the crime of perjury.
• Willful and Deliberate Assertion of Falsehood: Whether the private respondents' statements that the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting was held on 16 October 1996 and that they were elected as board directors thereat constituted a willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood sufficient to establish the third element of perjury.
• Effect of the Prior Dismissed Civil Cases: Whether the dismissal of the civil cases in G.R. No. 152542 and G.R. No. 155472 established probable cause to indict the private respondents for perjury.

• Probable Cause for Perjury: No. The prosecutorial authorities' consistent finding of absence of probable cause was supported by the evidence on record and disclosed no grave abuse of discretion; the Secretary of Justice's resolution on the existence or absence of probable cause, affirmed by the Court of Appeals, is accorded high respect and is generally conclusive on the Court.
• Willful and Deliberate Assertion of Falsehood: No. The third element of perjury was not established, the private respondents having acted in good faith and without malice in subscribing to their counter-affidavits, perjury being a felony by dolo that cannot be committed through mere negligence or imprudence.
• Effect of the Prior Dismissed Civil Cases: No. The pronouncements in G.R. No. 152542 and G.R. No. 155472 do not automatically imply that there is sufficient evidence or probable cause to indict the private respondents for perjury, as those cases contained no finding on the correct date of the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting and the election of the board of directors that would bind the Court.

• Probable Cause for Perjury: The function of a preliminary investigation is to determine whether there is sufficient ground to engender a well-founded belief that a crime has been committed and that the respondent is probably guilty thereof and should be held for trial; it is through such investigation that the prosecutor determines the existence of probable cause warranting prosecution. Probable cause, for purposes of filing a criminal information, consists of such facts as are sufficient to engender a well-founded belief that a crime has been committed and that the private respondent is probably guilty thereof; it is such a state of facts in the mind of the prosecutor as would lead a person of ordinary caution and prudence to believe or entertain an honest or strong suspicion that a thing is so. The term does not mean "actual or positive cause," nor does it import absolute certainty; it is merely based on opinion and reasonable belief. The prosecutor is vested with authority and discretion to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the filing of the corresponding information; if he finds probable cause, it is his duty to file the information, but it is equally his duty not to prosecute when, after investigation, the evidence adduced is not sufficient to establish a prima facie case. As explained in People vs. Pineda, a prosecuting attorney is under no compulsion to file a particular criminal information where he is not convinced that he has evidence to prop up its averments or that the evidence points to a different conclusion, and in case of doubt he should be given the benefit thereof, lest the courts be swamped with unmeritorious cases and the criminal suspect's right to due process be transgressed. As a general rule, the Court will not interfere in the conduct of preliminary investigations and leaves to the investigating prosecutor sufficient latitude of discretion in determining what constitutes sufficient evidence to establish probable cause. By way of exception, the Court may inquire into the determination of probable cause during preliminary investigation if, based on the records, the prosecutor committed grave abuse of discretion. Here, the City Prosecutor of Cadiz, the Regional State Prosecutor for Region VI, and the Secretary of Justice had consistently ruled that there was no probable cause to indict the private respondents for perjury, and no grave abuse of discretion or manifest error attended their action, their non-finding of probable cause being supported by the evidence on record. The resolution of the Secretary of Justice declaring the absence or existence of probable cause, affirmed by the Court of Appeals, is accorded high respect and is generally conclusive on the Court, and no exceptional reasons existed to deviate from that principle.
• Willful and Deliberate Assertion of Falsehood: Perjury is the willful and corrupt assertion of a falsehood under oath or affirmation administered by authority of law on a material matter. Article 183 of the Revised Penal Code penalizes any person who, knowingly making untruthful statements and not being included in the provisions of the preceding articles, shall testify under oath or make an affidavit upon any material matter before a competent person authorized to administer an oath in cases in which the law so requires. The elements of perjury are: (a) that the accused made a statement under oath or executed an affidavit upon a material matter; (b) that the statement or affidavit was made before a competent officer authorized to receive and administer an oath; (c) that in the statement or affidavit the accused made a willful and deliberate assertion of a falsehood; and (d) that the sworn statement or affidavit containing the falsity is required by law or made for a legal purpose. The third element requires that the accused had willfully and deliberately asserted a falsehood; a mere assertion of a false objective fact is not sufficient, as the assertion must be deliberate and willful. The petitioners failed to establish that the private respondents made a willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood in their counter-affidavits dated 11 June 1998. Private respondent Ramon H. Monfort had sufficiently and reasonably explained the circumstances surrounding the preparation and his signing of the erroneous statements in the 1996 GIS: as Vice-President of the MHADC he signed and certified the same under oath, but he was not aware of the erroneous statements at the time of signing; LDA, the corporation's corporate accountant, had solely prepared the GIS; he always relied on the accuracy of LDA; he hastily signed it because the LDA representative was in a hurry to beat the deadline for submission to the SEC; after being informed of the erroneous statements, LDA sent a letter to the SEC informing it of the mistakes and supplying the correct information; the erroneous statements were due to the oversight of LDA; and he admitted that he was negligent in not carefully reading and analyzing the statements therein. The naïve reliance of the private respondents on these circumstances in executing their counter-affidavits negated willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood, for perjury being a felony by dolo, there must be malice on the part of the accused. "Willfully" means intentionally, with evil intent and legal malice, with consciousness that the alleged perjurious statement is false and with the intent that it should be received as a statement of what was true in fact; it is equivalent to "knowingly." "Deliberately" implies "meditated" as distinguished from "inadvertent acts," and it must appear that the accused knows his statement to be false or is consciously ignorant of its truth. The private respondents believed in good faith that, based on the explained events, their statements in their counter-affidavits were true and correct; good faith or lack of malice is a valid defense against the allegation of deliberate assertion of falsehood in perjury cases. Perjury cannot be willful where the oath is according to belief or conviction as to its truth, and a bona fide belief in the truth of a statement is an adequate defense. The private respondents had consistently claimed that the 1996 GIS was erroneous on its face, had maintained all along that the annual stockholders' meeting was held on 16 October 1996 and not on 27 November 1996, and had submitted documentary evidence to prove the 16 October 1996 meeting and the LDA's communication to the SEC of the mistakes and corrections; they also submitted a letter from the SEC acknowledging the corrections and noting that these now formed part of the MHADC records. The Secretary of Justice had found the 1996 GIS patently erroneous, worthless, and without probative value because it did not establish that the true date of the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting was 27 November 1996, a finding sustained by the Court of Appeals.
• Effect of the Prior Dismissed Civil Cases: The pronouncements of the Court in G.R. No. 152542 and G.R. No. 155472 do not automatically imply that there is sufficient evidence or probable cause to indict the private respondents for the crime of perjury. It must be underscored that in those cases there was no finding with regard to the correct date of the 1996 annual stockholders' meeting and the election of the board of directors that would bind the Court in the petition at bar.

• Probable Cause in Preliminary Investigation — Probable cause, for purposes of filing a criminal information, consists of such facts as are sufficient to engender a well-founded belief that a crime has been committed and that the private respondent is probably guilty thereof. It is such a state of facts in the mind of the prosecutor as would lead a person of ordinary caution and prudence to believe or entertain an honest or strong suspicion that a thing is so; it does not mean "actual or positive cause" nor does it import absolute certainty, being merely based on opinion and reasonable belief. The Court applied this standard in holding that the prosecutor's dismissal of the perjury complaint rested on a legally sufficient evidentiary basis.
• Prosecutor's Discretion and Duty Not to Prosecute — A prosecuting attorney is under no compulsion to file a particular criminal information where he is not convinced that he has evidence to prop up its averments or that the evidence at hand points to a different conclusion; in case of doubt, he should be given the benefit thereof. Correspondingly, while it is the prosecutor's duty to file the information upon a finding of probable cause, it is equally his duty not to prosecute when the evidence adduced after investigation is insufficient to establish a prima facie case. The Court relied on this principle to sustain the dismissal of the complaint.
• Non-Interference with Preliminary Investigations; Exception — As a general rule, the Court will not interfere in the conduct of preliminary investigations and leaves to the investigating prosecutor sufficient latitude of discretion in determining what constitutes sufficient evidence to establish probable cause for the filing of an information. By way of exception, the Court may inquire into the determination of probable cause during preliminary investigation if, based on the records, the prosecutor committed grave abuse of discretion. No such grave abuse was found here.
• Conclusiveness of the Secretary of Justice's Resolution — The resolution of the Secretary of Justice declaring the absence or existence of probable cause, when affirmed by the Court of Appeals, is accorded high respect and is generally conclusive on the Court. The Court found no exceptional reasons to deviate from this principle.
• Elements of Perjury under Article 183, Revised Penal Code — Perjury is the willful and corrupt assertion of a falsehood under oath or affirmation administered by authority of law on a material matter. Its elements are: (a) that the accused made a statement under oath or executed an affidavit upon a material matter; (b) that the statement or affidavit was made before a competent officer authorized to receive and administer an oath; (c) that in the statement or affidavit the accused made a willful and deliberate assertion of a falsehood; and (d) that the sworn statement or affidavit containing the falsity is required by law or made for a legal purpose. The Court found the third element absent.
• Willful and Deliberate Assertion of Falsehood — The third element of perjury requires that the accused had willfully and deliberately asserted a falsehood; a mere assertion of a false objective fact is not sufficient. "Willfully" means intentionally, with evil intent and legal malice, with consciousness that the alleged perjurious statement is false and with the intent that it should be received as a statement of what was true in fact; it is equivalent to "knowingly." "Deliberately" implies "meditated" as distinguished from "inadvertent acts," and it must appear that the accused knows his statement to be false or is consciously ignorant of its truth.
• Perjury as a Felony by Dolo; Good Faith as Defense — Perjury being a felony by dolo, there must be malice on the part of the accused. Good faith or lack of malice is a valid defense against the allegation of deliberate assertion of falsehood in perjury cases. Perjury cannot be willful where the oath is according to belief or conviction as to its truth, and a bona fide belief in the truth of a statement is an adequate defense. The Court applied this doctrine to the private respondents' reliance on their corporate accountant's erroneous GIS.
• Negligence or Imprudence Cannot Constitute Perjury — The crime of perjury cannot be committed by negligence or imprudence. The Court affirmed the prosecutor's characterization of the erroneous GIS entries as attributable to oversight and negligence rather than to deliberate falsification.

• "Perjury is the willful and corrupt assertion of a falsehood under oath or affirmation administered by authority of law on a material matter." — This is the Court's canonical definition of the offense, stated immediately before its enumeration of the four elements of perjury under Article 183 of the Revised Penal Code.
• "The naïve reliance of the private respondents on the foregoing circumstances in executing their respective counter-affidavits dated 11 June 1998 negates willful and deliberate assertion of falsehood. Perjury being a felony by dolo, there must be malice on the part of the accused." — This passage states the ratio decidendi on the third element: good-faith reliance on the corporate accountant's work negated the malice essential to perjury.
• "Willfully means intentionally, with evil intent and legal malice, with consciousness that the alleged perjurious statement is false with the intent that it should be received as a statement of what was true in fact. It is equivalent to 'knowingly.' 'Deliberately' implies 'meditated' as distinguished from 'inadvertent acts.' It must appear that the accused knows his statement to be false or is consciously ignorant of its truth." — This is the Court's authoritative construction of the mental elements of perjury, frequently cited for the proposition that inadvertence or ignorance of falsity defeats the offense.
• "It should also be borne in mind that perjury cannot be willful where the oath is according to belief or conviction as to its truth. Bona fide belief in the truth of a statement is an adequate defense." — This excerpt establishes good faith or bona fide belief as a complete defense to a charge of deliberate assertion of falsehood in perjury cases.
• "As a general rule, this Court will not interfere in the conduct of preliminary investigations and leave to the investigating prosecutor sufficient latitude of discretion in the exercise of determination of what constitutes sufficient evidence as will establish probable cause for the filing of an information against an offender." — This passage articulates the general rule of non-interference, qualified in the immediately following sentence by the grave-abuse-of-discretion exception.

• People vs. Pineda, G.R. No. L-26222, 21 July 1967, 20 SCRA 748, 755 — Quoted at length as the controlling authority on the prosecutor's discretion not to file a criminal information where unconvinced of the evidence, and on the policy of resolving doubts in the prosecutor's favor to avoid swamping the courts with unmeritorious cases and transgressing the suspect's right to due process.
• Villanueva vs. Secretary of Justice, G.R. No. 162187, 18 November 2005, 475 SCRA 495, 511, 513 — Cited for the definition of probable cause for purposes of filing a criminal information and for the definition of perjury as the willful and corrupt assertion of a falsehood under oath or affirmation administered by authority of law on a material matter.
• Diaz vs. People, G.R. No. 65006, 31 October 1990, 191 SCRA 86, 93 — Cited as the source of the four elements of perjury and for the rule that a mere assertion of a false objective fact is not sufficient, the assertion must be deliberate and willful.
• Acuña vs. Deputy Ombudsman for Luzon, G.R. No. 144692, 31 January 2005, 450 SCRA 232, 245 — Cited for the rule that perjury cannot be willful where the oath is according to belief or conviction as to its truth, and that a bona fide belief in the truth of a statement is an adequate defense.
• Punzalan vs. Dela Pena, G.R. No. 158543, 21 July 2004, 434 SCRA 601, 611 — Cited for the general rule that the Court will not interfere in the conduct of preliminary investigations and will leave to the investigating prosecutor sufficient latitude of discretion in determining probable cause.
• Filadams Pharma, Inc. vs. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 132422, 30 March 2004, 426 SCRA 460, 470 — Cited for the exception permitting judicial inquiry into the determination of probable cause during preliminary investigation where the prosecutor committed grave abuse of discretion.
• Alonzo vs. Concepcion, A.M. No. RTJ-04-1879, 17 January 2005, 448 SCRA 329, 337 — Cited in support of the proposition that the prosecutor is vested with authority and discretion to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the filing of the corresponding information.
• Zulueta vs. Nicolas, 102 Phil. 944, 946 (1958) — Cited for the rule that if the prosecutor finds probable cause to indict the respondent for a criminal offense, it is his duty to file the corresponding information in court.

• Article 183, Revised Penal Code (False Testimony in Other Cases and Perjury in Solemn Affirmation) — Penalizes with arresto mayor in its maximum period to prision correccional in its minimum period any person who, knowingly making untruthful statements and not being included in the provisions of the preceding articles, shall testify under oath or make an affidavit upon any material matter before a competent person authorized to administer an oath in cases in which the law so requires. The Court quoted the provision in full and derived from it the four elements of perjury, concluding that the third element — willful and deliberate assertion of a falsehood — was not established against the private respondents.
• Section 1, Rule 112, Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure — Cited as the procedural basis for the preliminary investigation, whose function the Court described as determining whether there is sufficient ground to engender a well-founded belief that a crime has been committed and that the respondent is probably guilty thereof and should be held for trial.
• Article VIII, Section 13, 1987 Constitution — Invoked in the Division Chairman's Certification accompanying the Decision, attesting that the conclusions in the case were reached in consultation before the case was assigned to the writer of the opinion of the Court's Division.

• Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, Associate Justice (Chairperson, Third Division)
• Ma. Alicia Austria-Martinez, Associate Justice (On leave)
• Romeo J. Callejo, Sr., Associate Justice
• Antonio Eduardo B. Nachura, Associate Justice