Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa may be a step closer to final exoneration after the Philippine government recommended her acquittal from a cyber-libel conviction in June 2020.
The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) filed a manifestation with the Philippine Supreme Court (SC) recommending that Ressa and former Rappler researcher Reynaldo Santos Jr. be absolved of their Duterte-time guilty verdict.
The case stemmed from a 2017 complaint by local businessman Wilfredo Keng alleged by a 2012 Rappler article to have links with illegal drugs and human trafficking activities.
Ressa and Santos were convicted by a Manila Regional Trial Court, which was upheld by the Court of Appeals in July 2022.
The conviction, however, had less to do with the businessman’s complaint but more a punishment to Ressa and Rappler who were critical of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, her supporters claimed.
In its manifestation to the country’s High Tribunal that will decide on Ressa and Santos’s pending appeal, the OSG on Monday said it invokes its role as the People’s Tribune in its recommendation for acquittal.
The OSG, the government’s principal law office and legal defender, cited an earlier Supreme Court ruling shortening the prescription for cyber libel offenses to one year.
“Applying this doctrine, the filing of the criminal information against Ressa and Santos in early 2019 for the article re-published in 2014 and discovered by the complainant in 2016 is time-barred,” it said.
Prescription is the legal time limit within which a criminal information must be filed. Once the period lapses, the State can no longer prosecute, it added.
“As the People’s Tribune, the OSG’s mandate in criminal proceedings is not confined to seeking convictions. It includes assisting the courts in arriving at a just and legally correct disposition, grounded on the Constitution, statutes, and controlling jurisprudence even, and especially when, the law requires acquittal,” the OSG explained.
Ressa’s conviction, as well as a series of arrests during the Duterte government for various alleged offenses, fueled her nomination to one of the world’s most prestigious awards.
Ressa was awarded the prize along with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov in 2021. She is the first-ever Filipino to be honoured by the Scandanavian-based award. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
