An Act Authorizing the Appointment of Commissioners to Make Official Investigations and Fixing Their Powers, for the Payment of Witness Fees, and for the Punishment of Perjury in Official Investigations

August 23, 1907

ACT NO. 1697

AN ACT AUTHORIZING THE APPOINTMENT OF COMMISSIONERS TO MAKE OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIONS AND FIXING THEIR POWERS, FOR THE PAYMENT OF WITNESS FEES, AND FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF PERJURY IN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIONS

SECTION 1. Whenever, in the discretion of the Governor-General, it is necessary for the good of the public service to investigate any action or conduct of any person or persons in the Insular, provincial, or municipal service, he may by order designate a suitable person to make such investigation and to take the testimony of any person or persons which, in his judgment, may be relevant thereto, and may detail or authorize the said person designated to procure stenographers and interpreters to assist in the same. Such person so designated shall have full power to subpoena witnesses and require the production of documentary evidence and to administer oaths to witnesses as is possessed by Courts of First Instance in criminal actions and may invoke the summary process of such courts for the punishment of contempts in failure to appear or to produce evidence or to give testimony. All interpreters acting in any such proceeding shall be first duly sworn well and truly to interpret between the counsel, the witnesses, and the person so designated, and the stenographers shall be sworn to make a true transcript of the testimony given on such proceeding.

SECTION 2. Witnesses in proceedings under this Act and in investigations held by provincial boards under Act Numbered Three hundred and fourteen or by district auditors or fiscals shall be entitled to the same compensation as is now or may hereafter be provided for witnesses in criminal actions in Courts of First Instance, payable in the same manner upon the certificate of the board or officer conducting the investigation.

SECTION 3. Any person who, having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the Philippine Islands authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed material matter which he does not believe to be true, is guilty of perjury, and shall be punished by a fine of not more than two thousand pesos and by imprisonment for not more than five years; and shall, moreover, thereafter be incapable of holding any public office or of giving testimony in any court of the Philippine Islands until such time as the judgment against him is reversed.

SECTION 4. Any person who causes or procures another person to commit perjury as defined in the preceding section is guilty of subornation of perjury and shall be punished as in said section prescribed.

SECTION 5. Section two of Act Numbered Fifteen hundred and sixty-two is hereby repealed.

SECTION 6. The public good requiring the speedy enactment of this bill the passage of the same is hereby expedited in accordance with section two of "An Act prescribing the order of procedure by the Commission in the enactment of laws," passed September twenty-six, nineteen hundred. CAIHTE

SECTION 7. This Act shall take effect on its passage.

ENACTED, August 23, 1907.