PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. REYNALDO VILLAMIN Y BANAL, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.
SORONGON, E. D., J.:
Background of the Case
Accused-appellant was charged in an Information[2] which reads:
“That on or about October 17, 2007, in Sitio Bicolan, Barangay Silangan Calutan, Municipality of Agdangan, Provice of Quezon, Philippines, and within the jurisdiction of this Honorable Court, the above-named accused, armed with an unlicensed short firearm of unknown caliber, with intent to kill, did then and there willfully, unlawfully and feloniously attack, assault and shoot with said firearm one CRISPIN BANAL VILLAMIN, thereby inflicting upon the latter multiple gunshot wounds which were the direct and immediate cause of his death thereafter.
CONTRARY TO LAW”.
When arraigned on August 26, 2008, accused-appellant assisted by Atty. Melville Wendell Aureada-Laureles, his court appointed counsel de oficio for purposes of arraignment, entered a plea of not guilty to the charge.
During the pre-trial conference accused-appellant assisted by his counsel Atty. Rodel Ambas, invoked self-defense, hence, proceeded a reverse trial.
The Operative Facts
The trial court found:[3]
Accused-appellant and his brother Crispin Banal Villamin (hereinafter referred to as Crispin) were neighbors. On October 17, 2007, at about 7:00 o’clock in the evening, accused- appellant was watching television in the living room of his house at Barangay Silangan Calutan, Agdangan, Quezon while his wife and children were preparing dinner at the dirty kitchen separate from their house. He then heard his elder brother Crispin shout “papatayin ko kayo” outside his house. Crispin was allegedly holding a bolo in his right hand and a gun in his left hand. Accused- appellant then tried to stop him and asked him to go home because he was drunk, but Crispin refused and replied that he will kill them. Thus, accused-appellant hurriedly went to their bedroom and took his gun.
As Crispin continued to go near him, accused-appellant shot him four times with his .38 caliber paltik gun. He fired the first shot to Crispin in a distance of more or less three (3) meters. Yet, Crispin kept on approaching and threatening his wife and children, with his hands still holding up the bolo and the gun, so accused-appellant fired the second shot hitting the victim on the chest followed by the third and fourth shots until Crispin fell at the door of his house. Thereafter, accused- appellant went to Barangay Captain Toribio Arandia and informed him that he shot his brother. The Barangay Captain, however, did not advise the accused-appellant to surrender to the police station.
In May 2008, accused-appellant went to the police station to post bail. He claimed that he did not know of any reason why Crispin would get mad at him or harbor ill feeling against him.
During trial, SPO1 Martinez, a member of PNP Agdangan, testified that he was part of the investigating team that responded to the shooting incident on the evening of October 17, 2007 involving the accused-appellant and his brother. When he arrived at the crime scene he saw outside the house of accused-appellant a gun, a bolo and the lifeless body of Crispin. There was no blood-stain on the bolo. Both the bolo and the gun were not surrendered. He did not see the gun used by accused-appellant to kill Crispin. Accused-appellant surrendered to the police several months after the killing.
Dr. Felixberto Ilagan, Municipal Heath Officer of Agdangan, Quezon conducted a post-mortem examination on the cadaver of Crispin at Funeraria Ester on October 17, 2007. He recorded four (4) gunshot wounds as follows: (a) gunshot wound on the left nipple; (b) another gunshot wound on the left nipple; (c) gunshot wound on the right nipple; and (d) gunshot wound at the back level of 8th thoracic vertebrae (1.5 cm ate 3 o-clock position). He considered the three (3) gunshot wounds fatal because they were inflicted in the direction of the vital organs of the victim. He could not say whether the victim was intoxicated because he had no alcoholic breath.
P03 Alonzo, a police officer assigned at the Records Selection of Firearms and Explosives Office, Camp Crame, Quezon City testified that based on their records herein accused-appellant is not a licensed/registered firearm holder and that he has no pending application before October 17, 2007 in their office.
The Ruling of the Trial Court
As herein earlier mentioned, the trial court rendered a guilty[4] verdict on the accused-appellant. The dispositive portion of the decision reads:
“WHEREFORE, judgment is rendered finding the accused Reynaldo Banal Villamin guilty of the crime of homicide with the aggravating circumstance of using an unlicensed firearm. The Court sentences the accused Reynaldo Banal Villamin to suffer an indeterminate prison term of seven (7) years, 4 months and 1 day of Prision Mayor as minimum to 17 years, 4 months and 1 day of Reclusion Temporal as maximum. He is also directed to indemnify the heirs of Crispin Banal Villamin the sum of P50,000.00 as moral damages, plus P25,000.00 as temperate damages.
SO ORDERED.
This appeal is premised on the following assigned errors:
I.
THE HONORABLE TRIAL COURT GRAVELY ERRED IN SEEING THAT THE APPELLANT DID NOT ACT IN SELF-DEFENSE.
II.
THE HONORABLE TRIAL COURT CONSEQUENTLY ERRED IN CONVICTING THE APPELLANT.
Our Ruling
The petition is devoid of merit.
By pleading self-defense, an accused admits the killing, and thereby assumes the burden to establish his plea of self-defense by credible, clear and convincing evidence; otherwise, his conviction will follow from his admission of killing the victim. Self-defense cannot be justifiably appreciated when it is uncorroborated by independent and competent evidence or when it is extremely doubtful by itself. Indeed, the accused must discharge the burden of proof by relying on the strength of his own evidence, not on the weakness of the State’s evidence, because the existence of self-defense is a separate issue from the existence of the crime, and establishing self-defense does not require or involve the negation of any of the elements of the offense itself.[5]
To escape liability accordingly, the accused must show by sufficient, satisfactory and convincing evidence that: (a) the victim committed unlawful aggression amounting to an actual or imminent threat to the life and limb of the accused claiming self-defense; (b) there was reasonable necessity in the means employed to prevent or repel the unlawful aggression; and (c) there was lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the accused claiming self-defense or at least any provocation executed by the accused claiming self-defense was not the proximate and immediate cause of the victim’s aggression.[6]
The first requisite is indispensable. Unlawful aggression on the part of the victim is the primordial element of the justifying circumstance of self-defense. There can be no self-defense unless it is proven that there had been unlawful aggression on the part of the person injured or killed by the assailant. Consequently, if there is no unlawful aggression, there is nothing to prevent or repel.[7] The test for the presence of unlawful aggression under the circumstances is whether the aggression from the victim put in real peril the life or personal safety of the person defending himself; the peril however must not be an imagined or imaginary threat.8 It is necessary that an attack or material aggression, an offensive act positively determining the intent of the aggressor to cause injury, shall have been made. Thus, the accused must establish the concurrence of three elements of unlawful aggression, namely: (a) there must be a physical or material attack or assault; (b) the attack or assault must be actual, or, at least, imminent; and (c) the attack or assault must be unlawful.[9]
Applying the above-mentioned test to the present case, we find that sufficient provocation on the part of Crispin was not sufficiently proven by the defense. As correctly held by the trial court:
xxx. “To support Reynaldo’s allegation that there was unlawful aggression, defense presented the gun (Exhibit 3) with five (5) chambers and the bolo (Exhibit (4), with scabbard, allegedly belonging to Crispin. However, according to SPO1 Martinez who investigated the crime scene and who brought the gun and bolo to court, he observed that the bolo was inserted in the scabbard and tucked in the waist of Crispin while the gun was loaded with five (5) live ammunitions still intact inside its chamber. (The court observed that unlike other caliber .38 short firearm, the gun allegedly found in the crime scene (Exhibit 3) has only five holes in the chamber). No empty shell was recovered from the scene of the crime (underscoring and emphasis supplied).
xxx
Investigation conducted by SPO1 Martinez show however that Crispin did not fire the gun, assuming it to be his and did not hold or pull out the bolo as it was still in the scabbard contrary to what Reynaldo wanted to portray, assuming for the sake of argument without admitting, that they (bolo and gun) were indeed held or carried in his two (2) hands by Crispin while threatening or assaulting Reynaldo and his family.
xxx
Besides, it was not sufficiently established by the defense that there was an actual physical assault upon the family of the accused, who were at the dirty kitchen taking their time while preparing their food for dinner, so there was no defense of relatives to speak of.”[10]
xxx
Unlawful aggression is of two kinds: (a) actual or material unlawful aggression; and (b) imminent unlawful aggression. On one hand, actual or material unlawful aggression means an attack with physical force or with a weapon, an offensive act that positively determines the intent of the aggressor to cause the injury. Imminent unlawful aggression, on the other hand, means an attack that is impending or at the point of happening; it must not consist in a mere threatening attitude, nor must it be merely imaginary, but must be offensive and positively strong. To illustrate, the attack must not be a mere threatening attitude of the victim, such as pressing his right hand to his hip where a revolver was holstered, accompanied by an angry countenance, or like aiming to throw a pot.[11]
At this point, we find that there was no actual physical assault upon the accused-appellant nor to the latter’s family who were at that time at the dirty kitchen separate from their house to prepare dinner. Moreover, Crispin’ s alleged oral threats or threatening stance or position is not tantamount to unlawful aggression.
The nature, character, location and extent of the four (4) wounds, three of them fatal, as testified by the doctor who examined the wounds also clearly belied accused-appellant’s claim that he acted in self-defense. Again, the trial court is correct in saying:
xxx. “One mortal gunshot could have been enough to stop and disable deceased from further approaching the accused but Reynaldo fired three more shots which in the opinion of the court is too much. Dr. Ilagan gave the opinion that the fourth (4) gunshot wound could have been sustained by Crispin while he was slumped on the ground as it was located at the 8th thoracic vertebrae or at his back.”[12]
The case of People v. Santos[13] is instructive. In the said case, the Supreme Court ruled that just as the presence and severity of a large number of wounds on the part of the victim disprove self-defense, so do they belie the claim of incomplete defense and indicate instead not the desire to defend but rather a determined effort to kill. [14]
Regarding the accused-appellant’s allegation that the gun “locked” despite the victim’s attempt to fire, we find that such argument deserves scant consideration. As aptly observed by the trial court, the accused-appellant could not possibly see the movement of Crispin’s fingers because it was nighttime. Thus:
xxx “On cross examination, Reynaldo stated that his brother was shouting when he saw him coming towards their house carrying the bolo and a gun. He did not think to just leave the house, because, Crispin was “pasugod ng pasugod” pulling the trigger of his gun (.38 revolver) many times (kinukulbit po ang baril” threatening his wife and children who were preparing for their dinner. But he (Reynaldo) did not see the movement of Crispin’s fingers because it was night time”xxx[15] (underscoring and emphasis supplied).
With unlawful aggression, the indispensable foundation of self-defense, not having been established by the accused-appellant, it becomes superfluous to embark on a discussion on whether the remaining requisites of self-defense were attendant. Since unlawful aggression is clearly absent in the present case, there was likewise no reasonable necessity on the part of the accused to shoot the deceased himself and therefore, the second element is absent. As regards the third element, as ruled out by the trial court, if we have to consider the version of the accused-appellant that Crispin probably got angry when his wife did not let the latter borrow a water hose, this does not constitute sufficient provocation on the part of the accused-appellant.
Lastly, this Court took note of the fact that the shooting incident happened on October 17, 2007. Yet, accused-appellant did not surrender immediately to the police authorities. Instead, it was only on May 20, 2008 or about 7 months after the shooting incident took place when he showed up for bail. This obviously contradicts his claim of self-defense because he chose to flee from the scene of the crime and to stay beyond the clutches of the law, thus spotlighting the legal maxim ‘the guilty fleeth while the innocent stands fast, bold as a lion.”‘[16]
In fine, unlawful aggression on the part of the victim not having been established, self-defense cannot therefore be validly invoked by accused-appellant as a justifying circumstance in this case.
Finally, we note that no award of civil indemnity was made by the trial court. Thus, pursuant to the well-settled rule that every person criminally liable for felony is also civilly liable,[17] and consistent with prevailing jurisprudence that when death occurs due to the crime, a civil indemnity ex delicto in the amount of Fifty Thousand Pesos (P 50,000.00) for the death of the victim is proper.
WHEREFORE, the challenged Decision of the Regional Trial Court of Lucena City, Branch 55 dated August 10, 2011 is AFFIRMED with the MODIFICATION that accused-appellant Reynaldo Villamin y Banal is further ORDERED to pay the sum of P50,000.00 as civil indemnity ex delicto.
SO ORDERED.
Reyes, Jr., A.B., Chairman, and Rosario, R.R. JJ., concur.
[1] Decision dated August 10, 2011, Rollo, pp. 10-25
[2] Rollo, pp. 8-9.
[3] Rollo, pp. 11-17.
[4] Supra at Note 1
[5] People of the Philippines vs. Melanio Nugas y Mapait, G.R. No. 172606, November 23, 2011.
[6] Id.
[7] People vs. Bausing, G.R. No. L-64965, July 18, 1991.
[8] Supra at note no. 5.
[9] Id.
[10] Supra at Note 1, pp. 18-19
[11] Supra note at no. 5.
[12] Rollo, p. 68
[13] G.R. No. 99259-60, March 29, 1996.
[14] People of the Philippines vs. Jose N. Mediado, G.R. No. 169871, February 2, 2011.
[15] Rollo, p. 57.
[16] People of the Philippines vs. Florentino Bracamonte y Abellar, et al., G.R. No. 95939, June 17, 1996.
[17] Under Article 100 of the Revised Penal Code.