The petitioner was convicted of bigamy for contracting a second marriage before filing a petition for the declaration of nullity of his first marriage. While the bigamy conviction was on appeal with the Court of Appeals, the trial court granted his nullity petition on the ground that there was no ceremony. Be that as it may, the Court of Appeals sustained his conviction.
The Supreme Court, however, on appeal by the petitioner-accused, viewed the circumstances differently from the lower courts and acquitted him. Its decision read:
“We must first determine whether all the elements of bigamy are present in this case. In Marbella-Bobis v. Bobis, we laid down the elements of bigamy thus: (1) the offender has been legally married; (2) the first marriage has not been legally dissolved, or in case his or her spouse is absent, the absent spouse has not been judicially declared presumptively dead; (3) he contracts a subsequent marriage; and (4) the subsequent marriage would have been valid had it not been for the existence of the first.
“Applying the foregoing test to the instant case, we note that during the pendency of CA-G.R. CR No. 20700, the RTC of Bohol Branch 1 handed down the following decision in Civil Case No. 6020, to wit:
“Wherefore, premises considered, judgment is hereby rendered decreeing the annulment of the marriage entered into by petitioner Lucio Morigo and Lucia Barrete on 23 August 1990 in Pilar, Bohol, and further directing the Local Civil Registrar of Pilar, Bohol, to effect the cancellation of the marriage contract.
“The trial court found that there was no actual marriage ceremony performed between Lucio and Lucia by a solemnizing officer. Instead, what transpired was a mere signing of the marriage contract by the two, without the presence of a solemnizing officer. The trial court thus held that the marriage was void ab initio, in accordance with Articles 3 and 4 of the Family Code.
“As the dissenting opinion in CA-G.R. CR 20700 correctly put it: ‘This simply means that there was no marriage to begin with; and that such declaration of nullity retroacts to the date of the first marriage. In other words, for all intents and purposes, reckoned from the date of the declaration of the first marriage as void ab initio to the date of the celebration of the first marriage, the accused was, under the eyes of the law, never married.’
“The records show that no appeal was taken from the decision of the trial court in Civil Case 6020; hence, the decision had long become final and executory. The first element of bigamy as a crime requires that the accused must have been legally married. But in this case, legally speaking, the petitioner was never married to Lucia Barrete. Thus, there is no first marriage to speak of. Under the principle of retroactivity of a marriage being declared void ab initio, the two were never married from the beginning. The contract of marriage is null; it bears no legal effect.
“Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, for legal purposes, the petitioner was not married to Lucia at the time he contracted the marriage with Maria Jececha. The existence and validity of the first marriage being an essential element of the crime of bigamy, it is but logical that a conviction for said offense cannot be sustained where there is no first marriage to speak of. The petitioner must, perforce, be acquitted of the instant charge.
“The law abhors an injustice, and the Court is mandated to liberally construe a penal statute in favor of an accused and weigh every circumstance in favor of the presumption of innocence to ensure that justice is done.
“Under the circumstances of the present case, we hold that petitioner has not committed bigamy.”
See how vital the formal requisites of a marriage are? Article 3 of the Family Code requires a marriage ceremony whereby the parties must personally appear before the solemnizing officer and declare that they take each other as husband and wife in the presence of at least two witnesses. Absent this ceremony, there is no marriage to speak of — and that is precisely what let the petitioner in this case off the hook.
The facts and redacted portions of the decision are from Supreme Court G.R. 145226 (6 February 2004).