PEOPLE V. TERRADO (REMEDIAL)

The special civil action for CERTIORARI is intended for the correction of errors of jurisdiction or grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction. Its principal office is to keep the inferior court within the parameters of its jurisdiction or to prevent it from committing such a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.

By GRAVE ABUSE OF DISCRETION is meant such capricious and whimsical exercise of judgment as is equivalent to lack of jurisdiction. The abuse of discretion must be grave as where the power is exercised in an arbitrary or despotic manner by reason of passion or personal hostility and must be so patent and gross as to amount to an evasion of positive duty or to a virtual refusal to perform the duty enjoined by or to act at all in contemplation of law.

It should be remembered that as a rule, factual matters cannot be normally inquired into by the Supreme Court in a certiorari proceeding. As earlier stressed, the present recourse is a petition for certiorari under Rule 65. It is a fundamental aphorism in law that a review of facts and evidence is not the province of the extraordinary remedy of certiorari, which is extra ordinem - beyond the ambit of appeal.

At least, the mistakes ascribed to the trial court are not errors of jurisdiction correctible by the specila civil action for certiorari, but errors of judgment which is correctible by a petition for review on certiorari under Rule 45. The mere fact that a court erroneously decide a case does not necessarily deprive it of jurisdiction. Thus, assuming arguedo that the trial court committed a mistake in its judgment, the error does not vitiate the decision, considering that it has jurisdiction over the case. For this reason, the dismissal of the instant petition is called for.

In our jurisdiction, availment of the remedy of certiorari to correct an erroneous acquittal may be allowed in cases where petitioner has clearly shown that the public respondent acted without jurisdiction or with grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction.

however, and more serious than the procedural infraction, if the petition merely calls for an ordinary review of the findings of the court a quo, we would run afoul of the constitutional right against double jeopardy. Such recourse is tantamount to converting the petition for certiorari into an appeal, which is proscribed by the Constitution, the Rules of Court and prevailing jurisprudence on double jeopardy. Verdicts of acquittal are to be regarded as absolutely final and irreviewable.