What if the accused dies before final judgment?

Assuming that criminal charges have already been filed prior to the death of the accused, what would happen to the said cases? I do not refer to the late undersecretary Catalina Cabral. No case was filed against her before she went to Baguio and perished. I said perished, I am not sure if she died. Perished simply means she was lost.

This is an academic question to those who are going to take the Bar exams this year. What happens to the case when the accused commits suicide before he was convicted guilty beyond reasonable doubt by final judgment? Or was murdered while in detention, or just died by natural death while awaiting final decision of his case either pending trial or pending appeal? Or perhaps, disappeared and was spotted at an airport in Europe?

Under Article 89 of the Revised Penal Code, Act 3815, as amended, criminal liability is totally extinguished by the death of the convict as to the personal penalties and as to pecuniary penalties, liability therefore is extinguished only when the death of the offender occurs before final judgment. He can no longer be imprisoned because he died. But his estate or properties may be made to answer for the civil obligation arising from the crime.

In the case of People of the Philippines vs. Romeo Lantido y Lantayan (GR no 208651, 14 March 2018), the Supreme Court summarized the ruling: Death of the accused pending appeal of his conviction extinguishes his criminal liability and only the civil liability directly arising from and based solely on the offense committed, i.e. civil liability "ex-delicto in senso strictiore".  The Latin phrase means that it is based on obligation other than crime itself. This was based also on the opinion of the late justice Florenz Regalado, a famous authority on procedural law.

The Supreme Court held: As a corollary, the claim for civil liability survives notwithstanding the death of the accused, if the same may also be predicated and on a source of obligation other than delict. Article 1157 of the Civil Code enumerates these other sources of obligation from which the civil liability may arise as a result of the same act or omission.

By the way, all students who took up the subject Obligations and Contract, outside of the College of Law, would know that the following are the sources of obligations: Article 1157 provides that the sources of obligations are the following: law, contracts, quasi-contracts, delicts (meaning crimes) or acts and omissions punishable by law, and quasi-delicts.

The Supreme Court explained further in People vs. Lantido that "where the civil liability survives, as explained above, an action for recovery of said liability may proceed by filing a separate civil case subject to Section 111 of the 1985 Rules on Criminal Procedure, as amended. This separate civil case may be filed by the offended party against either the executor of the will, if any or the administrator of the estate of the accused, depending on the source of obligation under Article 1157 of the Civil Code.

Under Rule 111 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure, when a criminal action is instituted, the civil action for the recovery of civil liability arising from the offense charged shall be deemed instituted with the criminal action, unless the offended party waives the civil action or reserves the right to institute it separately or institutes the civil action prior to the criminal case.

The Supreme Court added that the offended party need not fear a forfeiture of his right to file this separate civil action by prescription because the rules provide that in cases where a criminal prosecution has been filed, the prescriptive period for the filing of the civil action is deemed suspended. That means that in such circumstances the statute of limitations is deemed interrupted.

The same ruling was made by the Supreme Court in another case, People v. Norieto Monroyo y Mahaguay (GR no 223708 on October 9, 2019). And so, relative to the many criminal charges being filed in relation to the flood-control anomaly and all other crimes nowadays, the government is very vigilant in making sure that the accused does not commit suicide or is not murdered while the case is pending trial or pending appeal.

Death has a certain way of speeding up the dispensation of justice, especially in this jurisdiction where justice is not only delayed, it is often denied.