THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. CRESENCIO MARTINEZ, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.

People versus Martinez

The Case

This is the People of the Philippines against Cresencio Martinez, a criminal appeal from a conviction for murder in the killing of Emilio Andallo, who was shot in an ambush on a barrio road in Abra. The case matters far less for the crime than for the method: the Supreme Court reverses a conviction because the trial judge who rendered it was not impartial, and because the single eyewitness on whom that judge relied was shown by the rest of the record never to have been at the scene at all. It is a lecture on the deference owed to trial courts, and on its outer limit.

Procedural History

Cresencio Martinez was charged with murder before the then Court of First Instance of Abra. After trial, the court, presided over by Judge Leopoldo Gironella, convicted him, imposed reclusion perpetua, and ordered him to indemnify the heirs of the victim in the sum of 12,000 pesos, without subsidiary imprisonment in case of insolvency. Being a detention prisoner, he was credited with only four fifths of the whole period of his detention for failure to show compliance with the conditions of Article 29 of the Revised Penal Code. He appealed directly to the Supreme Court, assigning as errors the crediting of the prosecution witnesses and the rejection of his defense.

Facts

Some days before December 1, 1971, Emilio Andallo asked his nephew Leonides Martinez, who was vacationing in his native place, to accompany him to Nueva Viscaya to look for his son. They agreed to travel on December 1, 1971. That morning the two walked the barrio road toward Bucay, Abra, on their way to the bus. On the road they met three persons going early to buy pigs, and then four public schoolteachers returning to their teaching stations in Barrio Abas after the Bonifacio Day holiday.

About a kilometer on, near a precipice, gunfire burst from the forested mountainside behind them. Leonides, walking some meters ahead, looked back and saw his uncle already lying flat on the ground. He jumped into the precipice, rolled down the slope as bullets passed him, and ran more than three kilometers for help. He reached a councilman, Lino Blanza, who hurried to the Constabulary detachment. Soldiers came, returned with him to the scene, and found the body of Emilio Andallo. The Constabulary spot report recorded that Emilio Andallo had been shot to death by an unidentified assailant and that his nephew Leonides escaped unhurt, with motive still unknown.

More than ten months later, on October 11, 1972, Trinidad Andallo, the sister of the deceased, appeared at the Constabulary provincial headquarters, instigated by her brother, a Constabulary sergeant, and claimed that she had been with Emilio during the ambush and had seen the assailants, Cresencio Martinez and his brother Juanito Martinez. She said the accused bore a grudge because Emilio had refused to intercede for him in an earlier murder case, and that she and the widow kept silent out of fear until Martial Law emboldened them. Against this, Leonides testified that only he and Emilio made the trip, and the three schoolteachers corroborated that they met only the two men on the road. A nephew of the Andallos testified that Trinidad was harvesting rice in the fields, more than three kilometers away, when the news of the killing arrived. The accused denied any part in the killing and set up alibi, claiming he was working as a cargoman on a ship in Romblon from June 1970 until he came home in May 1973. The trial judge, who had earlier acquitted a co-accused in an unrelated murder case while pronouncing in that decision that it was Cresencio Martinez who killed the victim there, gave credence to Trinidad and convicted him.

Issues

• Whether or not the trial court erred in giving credence to the testimony of Trinidad Andallo and in disregarding the testimony of Leonides Martinez, whose presence at the ambush was admitted by the prosecution.
• Whether or not the trial court erred in appreciating the evidence of the prosecution over that of the accused.
• Whether or not the accused should be acquitted on reasonable doubt.

Applicable Provisions

Article 29 of the Revised Penal Code, on preventive imprisonment, governs the credit given to the accused as a detention prisoner:

Article 29. Period of preventive imprisonment deducted from term of imprisonment. Offenders or accused who have undergone preventive imprisonment shall be credited in the service of their sentence consisting of deprivation of liberty, with the whole time during which they have been under preventive imprisonment, except when the offender has been previously convicted by final judgment of another crime, or when, being a detention prisoner, he has not shown good conduct, or when he has been previously convicted of any crime.

The trial court credited him with only four fifths of his detention for failure to show compliance with these conditions.

Ruling

The Court resolves the issues together, because they all turn on credibility. It begins from the settled rule that an appellate court will generally not disturb the findings of the trial court, which heard the witnesses and observed their deportment, unless the trial court plainly overlooked facts of substance and value which, if considered, might affect the result. That exception, the Court holds, applies here.

The Court stresses that Leonides Martinez was admittedly present during the ambush. He was a nephew of the deceased, he was the one who reported the shooting immediately after it happened, and he had no bias against the prosecution. The trial court, however, relied heavily on Trinidad Andallo, whose presence at the scene was belied by Leonides and by the corroborating schoolteachers, who testified that only Leonides and the victim traveled that road that morning. The Court finds the narration of the defense witnesses positively credible, probable, and entirely in accord with human experience, and it declines to credit a witness who surfaced only after ten months. The conviction cannot stand.

Doctrine

First, the rule of deference to the trial court's assessment of credibility is not absolute. It yields where the trial court plainly overlooked facts of substance and value which, if considered, might affect the result. Second, where the prosecution's eyewitness is contradicted by a witness whose presence at the scene the prosecution itself admits, and by disinterested corroboration, the conviction rests on insufficient proof. Third, the credit for preventive imprisonment under Article 29 of the Revised Penal Code is a matter of statutory condition, and the accused must show compliance to earn the whole period rather than four fifths.

Disposition

The Supreme Court reversed the judgment of conviction and acquitted Cresencio Martinez of the crime charged, on the ground that his guilt was not proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Remember This

Memorize the line that the exception to deference holds where the trial court plainly overlooked facts of substance and value which, if considered, might affect the result. Examiners use this case to test the limits of appellate deference to credibility findings, and the treatment of a tardy, uncorroborated eyewitness against an admitted witness at the scene.