The attorney-client privilege cannot apply in these
cases as the facts thereof and the actuations of both respondents therein
constitute an exception to the rule.
It may be correctly assumed that there was a
confidential communication made by Paredes to Sansaet in connection with the
criminal cases since the latter served as his counsel therein. The privilege is
not confined to verbal or written communications made by the client to his
attorney but extends as well to information communicated by other means. IOW, including
physical acts. The acts and words of the parties, therefore, during the period
when the documents were being falsified were necessarily confidential since
Paredes would not have invited Sansaet to his house and allowed him to witness
the same except under conditions of secrecy and confidence.
However, the announced intention of a client to
commit a crime is not included within the confidences which his attorney is
bound to respect. It is true that by now,
insofar as the falsifications are concerned, those crimes were necessarily
committed in the past. But for the privilege to apply, the period to be
considered is the date when the privileged communication was made by the client
to the attorney in relation to either a crime committed in the past or with
respect to a crime intended to be committed in the future. IOW, if the client
seeks his lawyer’s advice with respect to a crime which he has already
committed, he is given the protection of a virtual confessional seal which the
privilege declares cannot be broken by the attorney without the client’s
consent. The same privileged confidentiality, however, does not attach with
regard to a crime a client intends to commit thereafter or in the future and
for purposes of which he seeks the lawyer’s advice.
Here, the
testimony sought to be elicited from Sansaet as state witness are the
communications made to him by physical acts and/or accompanying words of
Paredes at the time he and Honrada were about to falsify the documents. Clearly, therefore, the confidential
communications thus made by Paredes to Sansaet were for purposes of and in
reference to the crime of falsification which had
not yet been committed in the
past by Paredes but which he, in confederacy with his present co-respondents,
later committed. Having been made
for purposes of a future offense, those communications are
outside the pale of the attorney-client privilege.
It is well
settled that communication between a lawyer and his client, to be privileged,
must be for a lawful purpose or in furtherance of a lawful end. The existence of an unlawful purpose
prevents the privilege from attaching. In fact, the prosecution of the
honorable relation of attorney and client will not be permitted under the guise
of privilege, and every communication made to an attorney by a client for a
criminal purpose is a conspiracy or attempt at a conspiracy which is not only
lawful to divulge, but which the attorney under certain circumstances may be
bound to disclose at once in the interest of justice.
To prevent
a conniving counsel from revealing the genesis of a crime which was later
committed pursuant to a conspiracy, because of the objection thereto of his
conspiring client, would be one of the worst travesties in the rules of
evidence and practice in the noble profession of law.
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