Due process prohibits criminal stability from shifting the burden of proof to the
accused, punishing wholly passive conduct, defining crimes in vague or overbroad
language and failing to grant fair warning of illegal conduct.[44] Class legislation is such
legislation which denies rights to one which are accorded to others, or inflicts upon one
individual a more severe penalty than is imposed upon another in like case
offending.[45] Bills of attainder are legislative acts which inflict punishment on individuals
or members of a particular group without a judicial trial. Essential to a bill of attainder
are a specification of certain individuals or a group of individuals, the imposition of a
punishment, penal or otherwise, and the lack of judicial trial.[46]
Penalizing unlicensed and licensed recruitment agencies and their officers and
employees and their relatives employed in government agencies charged with the
enforcement of the law for illegal recruitment and imposing life imprisonment for those
who commit large scale illegal recruitment is not offensive to the Constitution. The
accused may be convicted of illegal recruitment and large scale illegal recruitment only
if, after trial, the prosecution is able to prove all the elements of the crime charged. [47]
The possibility that the officers and employees of the recruitment agencies, which
are members of the respondent, and their relatives who are employed in the
government agencies charged in the enforcement of the law, would be indicted for
illegal recruitment and, if convicted sentenced to life imprisonment for large scale illegal
recruitment, absent proof of irreparable injury, is not sufficient on which to base the
issuance of a writ of preliminary injunction to suspend the enforcement of the penal
provisions of Rep. Act No. 8042 and avert any indictments under the law. [48] The normal
course of criminal prosecutions cannot be blocked on the basis of allegations which
amount to speculations about the future.[49]
There is no allegation in the amended petition or evidence adduced by the
respondent that the officers and/or employees of its members had been threatened with
any indictments for violations of the penal provisions of Rep. Act No. 8042. Neither is
there any allegation therein that any of its members and/or their officers and employees
committed any of the acts enumerated in Section 6(a) to (m) of the law for which they
could be indicted. Neither did the respondent adduce any evidence in the RTC that any
or all of its members or a great number of other duly licensed and registered recruitment
agencies had to stop their business operations because of fear of indictments under
Sections 6 and 7 of Rep. Act No. 8042. The respondent merely speculated and
surmised that licensed and registered recruitment agencies would close shop and stop
business operations because of the assailed penal provisions of the law. A writ of
preliminary injunction to enjoin the enforcement of penal laws cannot be based on such
conjectures or speculations. The Court cannot take judicial notice that the processing of
deployment papers of overseas workers have come to a virtual standstill at the POEA
because of the assailed provisions of Rep. Act No. 8042. The respondent must adduce
evidence to prove its allegation, and the petitioners accorded a chance to adduce
controverting evidence.
The respondent even failed to adduce any evidence to prove irreparable injury
because of the enforcement of Section 10(1)(2) of Rep. Act No. 8042. Its fear or
apprehension that, because of time constraints, its members would have to defend
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