PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. GERARDO EXTRA ALIAS HANDING, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

People versus Extra

The Case

This is a criminal appeal in which the People of the Philippines, as plaintiff, prosecuted Gerardo Extra, also known as Handing, for the killing of Leovigildo Saligao, the Barrio Captain of Putingbuhangin, San Juan, Batangas. The accused was convicted of murder qualified by treachery and sentenced to reclusion perpetua. The case matters to the Bar candidate because it gathers in one decision the classic rules on identification of an accused by a witness familiar with him, on the requisites of a dying declaration, and on the stringent requirements of the defense of alibi.

Procedural History

The Municipal Court of San Juan, Batangas first received a complaint for frustrated murder with direct assault upon an agent of a person in authority, filed on the day after the shooting. The accused was taken into custody only in January 1967. The case was tried in the Court of First Instance of Batangas, which, in a judgment dated March 23, 1968, found the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt of murder with treachery as the qualifying circumstance, sentenced him under Article 248 of the Revised Penal Code to reclusion perpetua, ordered him to indemnify the heirs of the victim in the sum of 6,000 pesos, with no subsidiary imprisonment in case of insolvency, and to pay the costs and suffer all the accessories of the law. The accused appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which decided the appeal on July 30, 1976.

Facts

At about seven o'clock in the evening of June 25, 1965, Barrio Captain Leovigildo Saligao went to the constabulary detachment station at Putingbuhangin, San Juan, Batangas, and sought the help of Sergeant Iglesias, the detachment commander, because the accused, Gerardo Extra, was for no valid reason threatening him with a firearm. Sergeant Iglesias, Corporal Rabanilla, Sergeant Regalado, and Corporal Pelayo accompanied the Barrio Captain to the barrio, with the Barrio Captain leading the way. The soldiers carried rifles and a pistol; the Barrio Captain was unarmed.

They first went to the house of Atanacio Extra, the father of the accused, arriving at about nine o'clock in the evening, and conversed with him for about two hours. The Barrio Captain asked Atanacio to send for his son so that any misunderstanding could be settled in the presence of the constabulary authorities. Atanacio sent Porfirio Aguila to fetch the accused, whose house was only five meters away, but Aguila returned saying the accused was not in his house. The Barrio Captain then said he was going home, and the soldiers decided to return to their station. As they were leaving the yard, with the Barrio Captain walking ahead and lighting the path with his flashlight, Corporal Rabanilla heard him shout, "There is Gerardo Extra!" In the direction of the flashlight's beam, about six meters away, Rabanilla saw the accused aiming a carbine at them and seeking cover behind a coconut tree. The accused fired, hitting the Barrio Captain with the first volley. The soldiers took a prone position, fired warning shots, and shouted that they were police authorities; the accused answered with four more gunshots, and the soldiers returned fire. The accused escaped.

The gravely wounded Barrio Captain was brought to a clinic in Lipa City. At about midnight, while gasping for breath, he gave an ante-mortem statement to Patrolman Tranquilino Sanchez, identifying the accused as the person who shot him with an automatic carbine. He thumbmarked the statement with his blood. He died of his wounds on July 4, 1965; the post-mortem examination showed a gunshot wound through the chest and gave the cause of death as bronchopneumonia secondary to that wound. The accused set up alibi, claiming he had left the barrio in the afternoon of June 25 because the Barrio Captain was looking for him, and that he spent that night in the house of Rosy Aguirre in Batangas, Batangas. He surrendered to the Provincial Governor of Batangas on January 6, 1967.

Issues

• Whether or not the accused was sufficiently and positively identified as the assailant of the deceased.
• Whether or not the ante-mortem statement of the deceased is admissible as a dying declaration.
• Whether or not the defense of alibi may prosper.

Applicable Provisions

Article 248 of the Revised Penal Code, under which the trial court sentenced the accused, provides:

Article 248. Murder. — The crime of murder is committed by any person who, not falling within the provisions of Article 246, shall kill another, with any of the following circumstances: 1. With treachery, taking advantage of superior strength, with the aid of armed men, or employing means to weaken the defense, or of means or persons to insure or afford impunity; 2. In consideration of a price, reward, or promise; 3. By means of inundation, fire, poison, explosion, shipwreck, stranding of a vessel, derailment or assault upon a street car or locomotive, fall of an airship, by means of motor vehicles, or with the use of any other means involving great waste and ruin; 4. On occasion of any of the calamities enumerated in the preceding paragraph, or of an earthquake, eruption of a volcano, destructive cyclone, epidemic, or any other public calamity; 5. With evident premeditation; 6. With cruelty, by deliberately and inhumanly augmenting the suffering of the victim, or outraging or scoffing at his person or corpse.

This is the provision under which the accused was convicted, treachery being the qualifying circumstance found by the trial court.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the identification was positive and reliable. Corporal Rabanilla was only about six meters away when the beam of the Barrio Captain's flashlight focused on the face of the accused, and the Barrio Captain himself recognized him and exclaimed, "There is Gerardo Extra!" Both were familiar with the accused, who was a barriomate of the deceased. The Court held that a person may be recognized by his face, height, movement, and the shape of his body by one familiar with his features, and that recognition by the flash of gunfire or by the light of a match has been sustained. The early sworn statements of the soldiers, executed the day after the incident, showed spontaneity and sincerity. The non-presentation of the flashlight was of no moment, since its existence was never questioned at the trial and could not be raised for the first time on appeal. The failure to present Sergeant Iglesias did not amount to suppression, since his testimony would be merely corroborative. The fact that the accused remained unscathed was not strange, given the darkness, the surprise, and his position behind the coconut trees.

On the second issue, the Court held that the ante-mortem statement was a valid dying declaration. Whether the declarant was without hope of recovery is a question of fact for the trial court, and the Court was convinced that at the time of the declaration the deceased believed he was going to die: he was seriously wounded, the bullet having pierced through his right chest, and he was gasping for breath. The Court quoted with approval the rule that a dying person need not be in the act of expiring, and that the admissibility of the declaration is not affected by the fact that the declarant died hours or several days later. The claim that the deceased was moved by jealousy rested on the uncorroborated assertion of the accused and on mere conjecture.

On the third issue, the Court held that alibi must be clear and convincing as to preclude the possibility of the presence of the accused at the scene of the crime, while the evidence of identification must be weak and insufficient. Here the identification was strong, and the alibi was riddled with inconsistencies: the father sent Aguila to fetch the accused on the very night he claims the accused had already left, and the accused reported the alleged threat to no police authority anywhere. The corroborating witness appeared to be an afterthought.

Doctrine

First, identification of an accused is sufficient when made by witnesses who know him, under adequate lighting, at close range, and revealed early and spontaneously to the authorities. Second, a dying declaration is admissible when the declarant was at the point of death and believed death to be imminent; it does not matter that death occurred hours or days later, for the admissibility of an ante-mortem declaration is not affected by the time of death. Third, alibi is a weak defense that must be clear and convincing to preclude the presence of the accused at the scene, and it cannot prevail over positive identification.

Disposition

The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of conviction, and the accused remained liable for murder with treachery, with the penalty of reclusion perpetua and the civil indemnity to the heirs of the victim.

Remember This

Memorize the line that a dying declaration does not require the declarant to be in the throes of death; it is enough that he believed death was imminent when he spoke. Examiners use this case to test identification through a flashlight beam, the requisites of a dying declaration, and the strict standards for alibi.