G.R. No. 19192. February 28, 1923

This appeal has been brought to reverse a judgment of the Court of First
Instance of the Province of Cagayan, finding the appellants, Ricardo Paredes and
Abelardo Crisologo, guilty of the offense of falsification of a commercial
document, and sentencing each of them to undergo imprisonment for six years and
one day, presidio mayor, with the accessories provided by law, to pay a
fine of P250, and jointly and severally to indemnify the Aparri branch of the
Philippine National Bank in the amount of P55,000, and each to pay one-fourth
part of the costs.

In the information two other persons, to wit, Teodorico Angeles and Miguel G.
Concepcion, were named as codefendants with these two appellants; but a
severance was had and the trial of the present appellants occurred at a
different time than the trial of their coaccused, and before a different judge.
The present opinion will therefore be confined to the appeal interposed by these
two appellants. Ricardo Paredes and Abelardo Crisologo, from the decision of his
Honor, Francisco Dominguez, published on December 31, 1921.

The case is closely related with that of Miguel G. Concepcion, who was
charged jointly with these appellants;^[1]
and in fact all these appeals have been heard together in this court, and to
some extent upon the same record. It should be stated, however, that the present
appellants were tried first; and the principal witness against them was
Teodorico Angeles, as to whom a dismissal had been entered in order that he
might be used as a witness for the prosecution. In said trial Miguel G.
Concepcion was not introduced as a witness for either party. When the time for
the trial of Concepcion arrived Teodorico Angeles had died, and the prosecution
was unable to use against him the testimony given by Teodorico Angeles in the
earlier trial against Paredes and Crisologo. Accordingly the prosecution
introduced the present appellants as witnesses against Concepcion, and they then
gave an account of the transactions which led to the prosecution substantially
identical with the story that had been told by them when testifying as witnesses
in their own behalf in the earlier trial.

In considering the appeal of the two present appellants, therefore, upon the
record presented at the trial of their own cause, we take account only of the
proof submitted to that trial and ignore the proof adduced by both parties in
the later trial against Concepcion.

The facts, however, as revealed at the two trials, are not materially
different; and we refer to our opinion upon the appeal of Miguel G. Concepcion
for a general statement of the facts relevant to the present prosecution. In the
present opinion we shall content ourselves with the statement of such additional
facts as are necessary to dispose of the appeal of the two appellants whose case
is now before us.

As intimated in our opinion upon the other appeal, the persons principally to
blame in the acts leading to this prosecution were undoubtedly Miguel G.
Concepcion and Teodorico Angeles, while Ricardo Paredes and Abelardo Crisologo
were rather victims of the artifices of the two than designing participants in
crime; and we shall now take up the case of each of these appellants in
turn.

The items of proof against Ricardo Paredes in relation with the offense in
question are in brief these: (1) That he was present at the interview in the
house of his son-in-law, Abelardo Crisologo, on the day, in October, 1919, when
the subject was discussed between Angeles, Concepcion, and Crisologo as to
whether the latter would allow his name to be used in the documents relative to
the loan which was contemplated to be made for the convenience of Concepcion;
although, as the witness Angeles states, Paredes took no active part in that
conversation and the three interlocutors appear to have spoken on that matter
somewhat apart from Paredes; (2) that Paredes on that or the next day went with
Angeles to look at some tobacco then deposited in Tuguegarao and which Angeles
pretended to have believed was part of the tobacco that was to be covered by a
quedan signed by Crisologo; (3) that, on October 24, 1919, Paredes received
P18,500, constituting the net proceeds of the two notes on that day discounted
by the bank, as already stated in our opinion upon the appeal of Concepcion; (4)
that after the first notes executed by Crisologo had been in the bank for some
time, Paredes, acting for Crisologo and others concerned, made a payment of
interest due or to become due upon said notes, using upon this occasion about
P1,600, believed to have been derived from the resources of Concepcion; (5)
that, upon another occasion, acting as attorney in fact of his son-in-law,
Abelardo Crisologo, he went through the form of executing in favor of the bank a
pledge of the same non-existing tobacco that had been included in original
quedans signed by Crisologo; (6) that upon still another occasion, after all the
notes had long been overdue, and the bank desired to get its credits
consolidated, Paredes, also acting under a power of attorney from Crisologo,
went through the form of consolidating the original notes and quedans into one
note and one quedan.

The mere recital of these circumstances suffices to show that they are far
from proving criminal complicity on the part of Ricardo Paredes in the original
estafa and falsification which is the sole subject of this prosecution.
His intervention on behalf of Crisologo, in doing certain acts as attorney in
fact of the latter, is explainable by the fact that Crisologo was his son-in-law
and lived in Tuguegarao, while the acts which Paredes did in behalf of Crisologo
were done at the bank in Aparri upon occasions when Crisologo was at home in
Tuguegarao and was not or could not conveniently be present.

It is of course to be assumed that at the time when Ricardo Paredes went
through the form of executing a pledge and later through the form of renewing
the notes and quedans—all of which was done at the instance of the bank—he knew
that the tobacco referred to in the pledge and quedans was non-existent, but no
estafa was then committed and the only offense charged in the present
information has reference to the original estafa and falsification
committed when the money was obtained. We therefore see no just basis for
attributing to Ricardo Paredes any criminal complicity in the acts for which
Concepcion has been convicted.

With respect to Abelardo Crisologo, it is evident that his formal connection
with the offense is much closer than that of Ricardo Paredes, inasmuch as he
signed the promissory notes and the quedans for the tobacco which supposedly
justified the loan. In signing these notes Crisologo was, civilly speaking,
substantially in the position of an accommodation maker; and he of course made
himself personally liable to the bank upon those notes for the benefit of
Concepcion. The act of affixing his signature to the quedans was done in a
spirit of blind complaisance explainable only in the light of his friendly
personal relations with Concepcion and his deference to the joint wishes of
Concepcion and the bank’s manager. It must be remembered also that this act was
done in response to the representation of Teodorico Angeles that Concepcion had
the tobacco and that the signing of the quedans by Crisologo was all a matter of
mere formality. Crisologo therefore misrepresented nothing to anyone; and we are
of the opinion that criminal responsibility cannot be predicated of his acts,
for want of the essential element of criminal intent. He was a mere tool in the
hands of others and is sufficiently punished by the ruin that must follow from
making himself civilly liable for so large a sum of money.

From what has been said it is evident that the judgment convicting these two
accused of the offense charged in the complaint must be reversed, and they will
be freely absolved from the complaint, with costs of both instances de
oficio. So ordered.

Araullo, C.J., Malcolm, Avanceña, Villamor,
Ostrand, Johns, and Romualdez, JJ., concur.

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^[1] See p. 544, post.