G.R. No. L-20153. June 29, 1967
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. FULGENCIO BAQUIRAN, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.
CASTRO, J.:
On September 7, 1959,
Fulgencio Baquiran was
charged with murder before the Court of First Instance of Isabela
committed according to the information filed by the Provincial Fiscal, in the
following manner:
“That on or about the 29th day of April, 1959, in the municipality of Tumauini, province of Isabela,
Philippines, and within the jurisdiction of this Honorable Court, the said
accused, together with John Doe, whose real identity is still unknown, conspiring
and confederating together and helping one another, with evident premeditation
and treachery, did then and there wilfully, unlawfully
and feloniously shoot with a carbine one Alberto Castillo, thereby inflicting
upon the latter gunshot wound passing thru and thru the outer surface of the
middle third of the right arm and passing thru its inner surface to enter the
4th intercostal space of the right anterior axillary line, which directly caused his death due to
gunshot wounds to the liver, right and left lung and smashing of the heart substance
and muscle to pieces, with extensive hemorrhage.”
The
court, after due trial, found the defendant guilty of the crime charged and
sentenced him to suffer “the penalty of life imprisonment (cadena perpetua),
with the accessory penalty of the law to indemnify the heirs of Alberto
Castillo in the sum of P6,000.00 and to pay the
costs.”
The defendant appealed to
this Court.
The crux of this appeal lies in the identity of the assailant of
Alberto Castillo. Juanita Marilao, the wife of the deceased, and Celedonia
Castillo, her daughter, pointed the accusing finger at the appellant Fulgencio Baquiran. The widow testified that on April 29, 1959, between the hours of
six and seven in the evening, the appellant appeared from nowhere and shot the
victim with a carbine while the latter and his family were
eating their supper. The bullet tore
through the body of Castillo causing instantaneous death. Upon seeing the bloodied figure of her
husband topple to the floor, Juanita fled and hid herself in the bushes about
two hundred meters away from her house.
Her three children, Franco (who is blind and the oldest at 16 years), Celedonia (12 yrs.) and Rostum (6
yrs.), likewise scampered away for safety.
At about midnight, she took
courage and emerged from her hiding place.
Forthwith, with her barrio mates, Mateo Forto
and Alfonso Ocampo, Juanita rushed to Tumauini to report her husband’s violent death to the
authorities.
At the PC detachment headquarters in Tumauini,
she met Sgt. Augusto Venturina,
the officer-in-charge, to whom she narrated the events of the night. Informed of the killing, Sgt. Venturina immediately called for Dr. Guillermo Laman, the municipal health officer, and,
together with Juanita and three Constabulary soldiers, proceeded to the scene
of the crime in barrio Sisim Alto. At about the same time, Bernardo Gumatay, the chief of police of Tumauini,
was preparing to conduct his own
investigation of the shooting at Sisim Alto after having been apprised of the incident by Ocampo and Forto.
Dr. Laman autopsied the body of the
deceased and found two gunshot wounds, one of which plowed through the liver,
traversed the right and left lung and smashed the heart muscle, causing
extensive hemorrhage which resulted in the death of Alberto Castillo. About a meter and a half from where the
gunman was supposed to have stood, two empty carbine shells were found.
The dining room where the
victim was shot is rectangular in shape, with a floor of bamboo rising half a
meter or so from the ground and separated from the kitchen by a gap about a
meter wide. It is walled on three sides
only, the southern part being completely open.
On the night of the murder, the deceased was seated on the western side
of the room, facing his wife and daughter, with his two sons somewhere to his
left. The assailant approached from the
southern side of the yard and was only two meters away from the victim
when he fired his gun. According to the testimony of Juanita
and Celedonia, it was possible to see the appellant
because the place was lighted by two kerosene lamps — one placed in the middle
of the floor where the family was eating and the other on the left side of
Juanita. Allegedly, appellant had a
companion but his identity has never been ascertained.
Fulgencio Baquiran was
convicted by the lower court on the basis of the declarations of Juanita Marilao and Celedonia
Castillo. His defense of alibi was disbelieved by the court a quo. Considering the magnitude of the charge and
the consequences of conviction, this Court is bound to assay the evidence
presented closely and carefully that it may arrive at a moral certainty as to
the guilt or innocence of the accused.
It is a legal truism that evidence to be believed, must not only proceed
from the mouth of a credible witness, but it must be credible in itself. Human perception can be warped by the impact
of events and testimony colored by the unconscious workings of the mind. No better test has yet been found to measure
the value of a witness’ testimony than its conformity to the knowledge and
common experience of mankind. It is on
this crucible that we now proceed to assess the declarations of Juanita Marilao and Celedonia Castillo.
Juanita Marilao’s testimony suffers from a plethora of
contradictions and on certain vital points runs counter to the testimonies of
both prosecution and defense witnesses and the other evidence on hand. Several of these inconsistencies place under a cloud of grave doubt her identification of the appellant as
the murderer of her husband. First, she
testified that on the evening of April 29, 1959, the family ate by the light of two
“improvised” kerosene lamps. On
cross-examination, however, it was brought out by the defense counsel that
in the affidavit subscribed and sworn to by Juanita on April 30, 1959 before Mariano T. Barcelo,
Justice of the Peace of Tumauini, she asserted that
she was able to recognize the accused because they were then using two candles
in the dining room. Celedonia’s
testimony in this regard is similar to her mother’s, and in her “Abstract
of Testimonies” given before Judge Barcelo and
certified by the latter, she likewise stated that they were using two candles that night. Testifying
eleven months later, mother and daughter had made a significant alteration in
their previous statements — statements given just a day after the murder! Was
the change made to lend more credence to their testimony as to the identity of
the assailant? Nonetheless, even
assuming that they were indeed using kerosene lamps, it is still doubtful
whether it would have been possible for the witnesses to have identified the
appellant as the murderer considering that eyes accustomed to light take some
time to adjust to darkness. The span of
time that elapsed from the moment the witnesses became aware of the menacing
presence of the killer to the time the fatal shots were fired appears from the
evidence to have been very short. And
after the deceased was shot, the witnesses fled in confusion without a glance
at the killer.
Second, when examined by the provincial fiscal as to the number
of times the accused fired at her husband, Juanita stressed that he did
“only once”. She was
contradicted by two prosecution witnesses, Dr. Laman
and Sgt. Venturina who both arrived at the same
conclusion that two shots were fired, the former basing his opinion on the fact
that there were two bullet wounds on the body of the deceased and the latter on
the recovery of two empty carbine shells at the scene of the crime. Adding further to the haze of her testimony
was Juanita’s statement on cross-examination that although she saw the appellant
even before her husband did, she did not give him any warning at all. Juanita’s
reaction to the presence of the assailant armed with a rifle and ready to fire
at her husband goes against the grain of common experience. It could not have been because there was no
more time to give any warning, for the deceased was even able to say,
“Who are you?”, before he was
gunned down.
The widow’s behavior after the incident was even more puzzling
and leads us to the conclusion that she did not at all recognize her husband’s
assassin and that her subsequent identification of the appellant was an
afterthought born
of a prejudiced mind. She related
that when she reported the murder to the PC detachment at Tumauini
around one o’clock in the morning of April 30, 1959, she told Sgt. Venturina
that it was Fulgencio Baquiran
who shot her husband. But Sgt. Venturina denied this and testified that she refused and
would not talk about the matter. Mateo Forto who, she admitted, was
present when she made the report to Sgt. Venturina,
confirmed the sergeant’s testimony and added that she said that she was not
able to recognize any of the killers. Forto also disclosed that on the way to Tumauini
he questioned Juanita as to the identity of her husband’s assailants and that
the widow replied that she was not able to recognize them because they had the
brim of their caps tilted downwards.
Bernardo Gumatay, chief of police of Tumauini, testified similarly. When he investigated the widow at the scene
of the crime, the latter revealed that she could not recognize the malefactors
because it was dark. Upon his return to Tumauini, Gumatay entered the
result of the evening’s investigation in the police blotter under date of April 30, 1959 (exh.
3). Dr. Laman,
who overheard the conversation between Gumatay and
the widow, corroborates the former’s testimony. These witnesses have not been shown by the
prosecution to have any inordinate interest in the acquittal of the
accused. No one is a relative or barrio-mate
of the appellant. They are disinterested
persons and the record does not indicate any reason for us to disbelieve their
testimonies or to suspect their motives.
The natural reaction of one who witnesses a crime and recognizes
the offender is to reveal it to the authorities at the earliest
opportunity. Juanita Marilao
did report the crime to the Constabulary but she did not reveal the identity of
the assailant although it was inquired into three times or more. It taxes credulity that Juanita made no
effort to expose the appellant then. Her
silence casts serious doubt on her subsequent identification of the appellant. Had she really recognized the appellant, as
the prosecution contended, she would have immediately and spontaneously
revealed his identity upon reporting the crime as would be expected according
to the natural course of things. The
argument that she was still in a state of shock after the incident and that she
was afraid of reprisal from the assailants who were still at large is not
supported by the evidence on record. The
fact that she was able to seek
out Ocampo and Forto to
help her go to Tumauini on the night of the murder
does not show a confused and disorganized mind.
If she were afraid of reprisal, wouldn’t it be more in consonance with
common experience for her to have revealed the identity of the accused that he
might safely be put behind bars? As it
were, the accused was not ordered arrested until May 3, 1959 after Sgt. Venturina
filed a complaint the day before. This
is in itself significant for it lends support to the declarations of Celedonia and Fulgencio that the
identification of the latter as the alleged assailant took place on May 1, 1959 and not on April 30 as
asserted by both Juanita and Venturina. As previously mentioned, Juanita testified
that she identified the accused
as the murderer of her husband during the first hours of the morning of April 30, 1959 when she reported her
husband’s death to the PC detachment at Tumauini. This was denied and contradicted by Sgt. Venturina who asserted that the identification was made
during the confrontation between the widow and the appellant in the morning of
April 30 around nine or ten o’clock in the morning. Celedonia, who was
investigated together with her mother as Venturina
himself admitted, testified that the investigation took place on May 1, 1959 and that the accused was
not present at all. This corroborates Baquiran’s statements to the same effect. For more than twenty-four hours then no word
was received from the widow as to the identity of her husband’s killers. This despite the fact that
after her husband’s burial on April 30, she decided to spend the rest of the
day and night in Tumauini. If Sgt. Venturina
filed the complaint only on May 2, 1959 it could have been
due to the fact that the widow made her identification only the day before, May 1, 1959. By then, she had had more than ample time for
reflection and what was merely a
suspicion deepened into a conviction.
She admitted on cross-examination that she was not able to identify her
husband’s killer although she suspected somebody. Thus:
“Q.- You want to make this Honorable Court understand
that the Chief of Police, together with his two policemen, Domingo and Taguba, went to that
place where your husband was shot and killed without interrogating or making
investigation regarding the assailant?
“A.- He asked me, sir.
“Q.- And there you told him that you were not able
to identify the person who shot and killed your husband, although you suspected
somebody?
“A.- Yes, sir.” (t.s.n. 71).
She
repeated her suspicions later to Chief of Police Gumatay
after the burial of her husband, mentioning the name of Baquiran
as the suspect. Needless to say,
suspicion is not identification. And
the fact that she merely had suspicions is an indication that at the time her husband was shot, she was not
able to make a positive identification of the assailant.
The prosecution attempted
to develop the theory that the deceased was killed on account of a dispute with
the appellant involving a piece of tobacco land. However, several facts in the record
testified to by both the accused and the widow weaken the prosecution’s
theory, viz:
that the land allegedly in dispute was bartered by the
deceased to his brother, stepfather of the accused, for a carabao
in 1953; that the appellant is not the owner of the land but merely worked on
it for his stepfather; that the dispute, if any, happened three years before or
in 1956 over a question of boundaries but had been settled amicably the same
year; that prior to the murder, the appellant had kept within his stepfather’s
land and had not encroached upon the deceased’s; and that the widow herself
admitted that there was no question between the deceased and the appellant
concerning the land before the former’s death. We quote:
“Q.- In other words, before the death of your husband
there was no question between your husband and the defendant about that land?
“A.- None, sir.
“Q.- You are very sure of that?
“A.- Yes, sir.” (t.s.n. 22).
No other motive for the killing has been shown by the prosecution. The widow only mentioned the alleged dispute
over the tobacco land and even then contradicted herself on cross-examination
by admitting that anterior to the incident no question over the land existed
between her husband and the accused. It
is true Juanita testified that the accused tried to claim part of her land
after the death of her husband but the same is uncorroborated and was denied by
the appellant.
The other leg on which stands the prosecution’s case is provided
by the testimony of Celedonia Castillo. With regard to the identity of her father’s
assailants, her testimony squares with her mother’s statements pinning the
blame on Fulgencio Baquiran. However, we find it difficult to give it
credence. Like her mother, she took an
unnaturally long time to disclose the murderer’s identity despite the opportunities
she had to make such revelation. She
admitted that she revealed the identity of the assailant for the first time
only on May 1, 1959 when she was investigated by Venturina at the PC detachment in Tumauini. If she really knew her father’s killer or
killers, she would have told either Sgt. Venturina or
Chief of Police Gumatay when the two made inquiries
on the night of the murder. Furthermore,
she confessed on cross-examination that she was present and within hearing
distance when her mother was investigated by Sgt. Venturina
at Tumauini on May 1, 1959 and that what she heard her
mother declare, she repeated later before Judge Barcelo
who made an abstract of her testimony.
Like a dutiful daughter, she followed her mother’s lead when the latter
singled out the appellant as the malefactor.
We now turn to the alibi of Fulgencio Baquiran. At the
time of the incident, he was one of the barrio lieutenants of Arcon, Tumauini, Isabela. Around four o’clock in the afternoon of April
29, 1959, Eusebia Gonzales, the owner of a sari-sari
store in Arcon, reported the theft of a bottle of wine
from her store to Baquiran. However, he was not at home then as he had
gone plowing in Minanga, another barrio of Tumauini. At five
o’clock in the afternoon, he
went home and was informed by his wife of the theft and Gonzales’ desire to see
him. After resting for a while and
cooking for his wife who had just given birth, he went to see Gonzales,
arriving in her store around six o’clock in the evening. After thirty minutes, he left to send for the
suspected thief, Eliseo Macoco. He went to the house of Abelardo
Manuel, a barrio policeman, to ask the latter to see Magno
Belisar, another policeman within whose territory Macoco lives, that he may fetch the suspect. He arrived at Manuel’s house around seven
o’clock in the evening and waited for about an hour for Belisar’s
report. At eight o’clock, his emissary
reported that the suspect could not come because of a headache. At around eight-thirty, Baquiran came back to the store of Gonzales and told her that the
investigation had to be conducted another time as the alleged thief was not in
a proper condition for any
inquiry.
The time and the sequence of events constituting the alibi of Baquiran are corroborated by four witnesses
none of whom is his relative or is possessed with an
observable reason, cause or motive to falsify his or her testimony. Although Abelardo
Manuel’s reckoning of the time is thirty minutes earlier than that made by the
appellant, nonetheless the crucial period from six o’clock to seven o’clock in
the evening has been well covered by his testimony and that of Gonzales.
The appellant’s alibi is uncontradicted
by the prosecution. Its veracity has
not been seriously challenged and, except for the minor inconsistency as to the
name of the stolen bottle of wine, no other contradiction fatal to the alibi of
appellant has been exposed. Neither did
the prosecution show that from six-thirty, when Baquiran
left the store of Gonzales, to seven o’clock, when he arrived at the house of Abelardo Manuel, the accused had the time and opportunity
to go to Sisim Alto, shoot the deceased and return to
Arcon to establish his alibi. On the other hand, the defense proved that
barrio Sisim Alto is more than six kilometers from
barrio Arcon and that to go from one place to the
other one has to pass through two other barrios, Sisim
Abajo and Minanga, as well
as cross a river. Although alibi is the
weakest defense that an accused can avail of, it acquires commensurate
strength where, as in this case, no positive and proper identification has been
satisfactorily made by witnesses of the offender’s identity. The prosecution has the onus probandi in establishing the guilt of the
accused, and the weakness of the defense does not relieve it of this
responsibility. As this Court recently
stated:
“The rule that alibi must be satisfactorily proven was never
intended to change the burden of proof in
criminal cases; otherwise, we will see the absurdity of an accused being
put in a more difficult position where the prosecution’s evidence is vague and weak than where it
is strong.” (People vs. Fraga,
et al., G.R. No. L-12005, August 31, 1960).
ACCORDINGLY, the judgment a quo is reversed,
and the appellant is hereby acquitted, with costs de oficio.
Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, J.B.L., Dizon, Makalintal, Bengzon, J.P., Zaldivar, and Sanchez, JJ., concur.