G.R. No. L-17321. November 29, 1963
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. SANTOS DONIEGO, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.
PADILLA, J.:
Upon arraignment the defendant entered a plea of not guilty.
After trial, the court found the defendant guilty beyond reasonable
doubt as charged and sentenced him for each murder to suffer the
penalty of reclusión perpetua which shall not exceed FORTY
(40) years pursuant to article 70 of the Revised Penal Code and to
indemnify the heirs of each of the victims Anselmo Garcia, Ciriaco
Palor and Maximo Viernes in the sum of P6,000.00 and to pay the costs.
The defendant was credited with one-half of the time he had undergone
preventive imprisonment.
From the verdict and sentence, the defendant has appealed.
On the night of 1 July 1957, a dance was held in the auditorium of
Cabanbanan Norte, Gonzaga, Cagayan, in celebration of the barrio
fiesta, but as rain fell, the dance was transferred to a 2-story house
owned by Severino Patubo. At about 10:00 o’clock while the dance was
going on, Severino Patubo, who was in his store on the ground floor,
saw Domingo Doniego talking to Patrocinio Viernes. Camilo Ragual, a
companion of Patrocinio Viernes, was also there. While thus conversing,
Severino Patubo saw Domingo Doniego suddenly lunge at Patrocinio
Viernes with a Batangas knife but the latter was not hit because Camilo
Ragual wrested the knife from Domingo and with it stabbed the latter in
his back. Severino Patubo called his brother Nemesio Patubo, the second
barrio lieutenant, to come down because there was a fight. Nemesio sent
rural policeman Ciriaco Palor to call Magno Taloza, the first barrio
lieutenant. Magno Taloza arrived with Ciriaco Palor and after seeing
the deceased, he sent for rural policemen to see the place. Later,
rural policeman Anselmo Garcia arrived. Taloza asked for paper and
pencil and when about to start the investigation, Santos Doniego,
father of the deceased arrived, and asked Taloza who had killed his son
Domingo. Taloza answered that he did not know because he had just
arrived. He asked Severino Patubo and the latter answered that Camilo
Ragual had killed his son Domingo. Santos Doniego followed by Severino
Patubo went up the house and shouted “vulva of all your mothers”. He
unsheathed his small sharp-pointed bolo (Exh. D) and immediately began
to assault the people there. He stabbed Vicente Pescador on his right
thigh who immediately jumped from the back porch (batalan) of the
house; then he hacked rural policeman Anselmo Garcia on the left side
of his back. Turning around, he stabbed Avelino Paet, the operator of
the amplifier, in the coccyx when he (Avelino) was about to leap from
the house; and as the Patubo brothers and companions were many, Santos
avoided the group and instead stabbed Ciriaco Palor in his abdomen
while the latter was helping Taloza, the first barrio lieutenant,
conduct the investigation. Ciriaco Palor jumped from the balcony of the
house. Máximo Viernes, secretary of the barrio council, ran towards the
kitchen and there near the door Santos inflicted upon the former
(Máximo Viernes) a thru and thru wound on the right side of his back
piercing the abdomen which caused his intestines to come out. After his
brother-in-law Ciriaco Palor had been stabbed, Magno Taloza jumped out
of the house and returned to his house. As a result of the stab wounds
inflicted upon Ciriaco Palor and Máximo Viernes the former died
instantaneously and the latter a little over half an hour later. After
he had been stabbed, Anselmo Garcia was able to return to his house
where before he expired at 12:00 midnight, he told his wife, Francisca
Patubo, that Santos Doniego had stabbed him. His wife asked him to
write an ante-mortem statement (Exh. E), which he did, but he was not
able to sign it. He wrote in Exhibit E that Santos Doniego had stabbed
him without any motive (Exh. E-1). On 2 July 1957, Dr. Federico P.
Umayam, the municipal health officer of Gonzaga, Cagayan, examined the
cadavers of the three deceased and issued the following certificates:
POSTMORTEM EXAMINATION
Body of ANSELMO GARCIA (37 yrs.) : (1) Wound, stabbed, penetrating, perforating, lumbar region, left back. Length ……………. About 1 inch. (2) Wound, stabbed, lower 3rd, arm, posteriorly, left. Length ……………. About ½ inch Depth …………….. About 1/3 inch Cause of death ……………. Internal hemorrhage (Exh. A) Body of MAXIMO VIERNES (33 yrs.) : (1) Wound, stabbed, thru and thru, perforating. Pt. of Entrance ………… Lumbar region, back, right.
Pt. of Exit ………………… Epigastric region
Length ……………………. About 1 inch Cause of death ……………. Internal hemorrhage (Exh. B) Body of CIRIACO PALOR (62 yrs.) : (1) Wound, stabbed, penetrating, 5th I.C.S. Chest, left side of the Sternum Length ………………………. About 1-1/3 inch. Cause of death ……………. Internal hemorrhage (Exh. C)
He testified that he had examined the corpses of the three deceased
and that the cause of their death was internal hemorrhage as a result
of penetrating stab wounds; and that the wounds resulting in their
death could have been caused by the bolo (Exh. D). He further testified
that the bolo may have been the only weapon used to inflict the stab
wounds upon the three victims.
The appellant denied he had killed the victims. He testified that
while he, his wife, step-son and his brother-in-law, Vicente Villena,
were taking their dinner at about 10:00 o’clock in the evening of 1
July 1957, Ernesto Palor, a minor, informed him that his son Domingo
was quarrelling and fighting with someone in the house of Severino
Patubo; that he went unarmed with his wife and brother-in-law to the
house and did not pick up any arm in the house; that when he came near
the place he saw people running away and noticed that there were no
more people in the upper floor of the house and the store on the ground
floor was closed; that he saw the lifeless body of his son Domingo near
the stairway; that he embraced his dead son and asked his
brother-in-law to help him carry his son to his house as they did; that
Laureana Pastor came to his house to tell him that Camilo Ragual
stabbed his son while Patrocinio Viernes held him; that because
Pattrocinio Viernes, one of the killers, was not arrested he was
enraged and wanted to go out to avenge the death of his son but his
wife Rufina Palor prevented him from doing so; that the following day
patrolman Sofronio Domingo came to his house to bring him to jail
because he threatened to kill Patrocinio Viernes who had not been
jailed; that he did not run amuck, nor kill or wound any person; that
Magno Taloza testified against him because in another murder ease
(Crim. Case No. 2612-A) he (appellant) and Sgt. Pastores implicated the
former and Manuel Doniego who in his (appellant’s) presence and of
Basilio Abenoja shot to death the latter’s father, Mariano Abenoja, in
1943 (Exhs. 4 & 5); and that he was not informed that he had killed
Palor, Viernes and Garcia when he was arrested but only a week after.
Vicente Villena, a brother-in-law of the appellant, Eugenio
Macalingay, appellant’s son-in-law, and Avelino Paet corroborated the
testimony of the appellant.
According to the defense it was Patrocinio Viernes who drew his bolo
from its scabbard as he was going up the house and upon reaching the
second floor challenged the relatives of the deceased saying: “Who
among you relatives of Ingo (Domingo Doniego) would take his side;”
that Patrocinio immediately ran toward Ciriaco Palor, uncle of Domingo,
but when Palor drew his bolo and aimed at Patrocinio, the latter
noticing that his adversary (Palor) had a larger bolo backed out and
ran away; that to defend his cousin Patrocinio, Máximo Viernes drew his
bolo but Ciriaco Palor struck Máximo’s back when the latter tried to
escape; and that Anselmo Garcia stabbed Ciriaco Palor who also stabbed
the former.
The appellant claims that the trial court erred in giving more
weight to the testimony of the prosecution witnesses and in convicting
the accused of three murders.
The trial court correctly found that the appellant killed Anselmo
Garcia, Ciriaco Palor and Máximo Viernes. It could not be expected of
Patrocinio Viernes, after his companion Camilo Ragual had stabbed
Domingo Doniego to death, to go up the house and challenge the
relatives of Domingo who would take his side, for he who helped Ragual
when he stabbed Domingo by holding him would not tarry in the place to
be harmed by the relatives of the deceased or arrested. His companion
Camilo Ragual disappeared from the place where Domingo was stabbed to
death. Ciriaco Palor, a rural policeman, was immediately sent by
Nemesio Patubo, the second barrio lieutenant, after the stabbing of
Domingo, to call the first barrio lieutenant Magno Taloza, who together
with Ciriaco Palor came to the house of Severino Patubo, so Ciriaco
Palor was not in the upper floor of the house of Severino Patubo when,
according to the appellant’s evidence, Patrocinio Viernes went up the
house and made the challenge already mentioned. The challenge and
assault or stabbing after the arrival of the first barrio lieutenant
Magno Taloza and Ciriaco Palor could not have been made because the
investigation was started or about to start by the first barrio
lieutenant Magno Taloza and the presence of other rural policemen would
have certainly deferred Patrocinio Viernes from assaulting and stabbing
people who were in the house at the time.
Francisca Patubo, the wife of Anselmo Garcia, testified that upon
arriving at their house her husband told her that the appellant had
stabbed him. Ciriaco de la Cruz, the then chief of police of Gonzaga,
Cagayan, testified that when he together with the Mayor, Dr. Umayam and
two policemen, went to the appellant’s house to arrest him because he
had killed three persons (Garcia, Palor and Viernes) and wounded two
others, the appellant seemed to cry and told him (the chief of police)
that he (the appellant) did not know what had happened; and that
without a warrant he arrested the appellant on the strength of his
findings at the scene of the crime, bolstered up by the statements of
the first barrio lieutenant and the owner of the house, that he had
killed three persons and wounded two others.
It was most natural and logical for the appellant to have been
enraged and obfuscated at the sight of his dead son Domingo who was
stabbed to death and seized by that feeling of hatred and rancour, to
have stabbed indiscriminately even his brother-in-law Ciriaco Palor, a
cousin of his wife Máximo Viernes, and the husband of a niece of the
appellant’s wife Anselmo Garcia, and wounded Vicente Pescador on the
right thigh and Avelino Paet, the amplifier operator, in the coccyx.
The latter’s testimony that he was not stabbed by the appellant but by
Ciriaco Palor merits scant consideration because he was stabbed when he
was about to leap from the house and there was panic and confusion at
the time. This may be gleaned by his answer when he was asked whether
it could be possible for him to determine or point to the person who
stabbed him. His answer is “After I was stabbed, I immediately turned.
The first one I saw was Ciriaco Palor with a bolo.” (p. 80, t.s.n., 28
March 1960) Eyewitnesses swore that the appellant did the stabbing. The
motives imputed to Severino and Nemesio Patubo and Magno Taloza that
prompted them to testify against the appellant are not sufficient to
discredit their testimony, because the release or non-inclusion of
their nephew Patrocinio Viernes in the complaint or information asked
by them (the Patubos) from the appellant, does not rest with them but
depends upon the evidence found by the prosecuting officers; and
because the appellant’s conviction in this case would not disqualify,
bar and prevent him from testifying against Magno Taloza in the
criminal case for murder filed against him.
The information charges the appellant with two qualifying
circumstances, to wit: treachery and evident premeditation. Although
the evidence may justify or support the finding that the assault upon
Vicente Pescador was sudden, yet the assault upon Anselmo Garcia,
Avelino Paet, Ciriaco Palor and Máximo Viernes cannot be deemed to have
been sudden, for the assault upon Vicente Pescador must have put them
on guard and the assault upon them cannot be characterized as
unexpected or sudden. To justify the attendance or concurrence of
treachery in the commission of a crime against persons, the offender
must have availed himself of such means as would insure the execution
of the crime without risk to himself that may come from the assaulted
person. Such means was not availed of by the appellant. Obviously,
evident premeditation was absent when the appellant with his bolo
hacked his victims. On the other hand, the atenuating circumstance of
immediate vindication of a grave offense—the stabbing of his son to
death, or of having committed the crime upon an impulse so powerful as
naturally to have produced passion or obfuscation, may be deemed to
have attended the commission of the three crimes alternatively, because
both mitigating circumstances cannot co-exist.
The crime committed by the appellant is homicide and the penalty provided for by Section 249 of the Revised Penal Code is reclusión temporal
to its full extent. There being a mitigating circumstance the penalty
should be imposed in its minimum period. And, pursuant to the
Indeterminate Sentence Law, the appellant is sentenced to suffer a
minimum of 10 years and one day of prisión mayor and a maximum of 14 years and 8 months of reclusión temporal, the accessorories of the law, for each of the three homicides committed by him.
Modified as to the crime committed and the penalty to be suffered by
the appellant, the rest of the judgment appealed from, in so far as it
is applicable to the penalty hereby imposed, is affirmed, with costs
against the appellant.
Bengzon, C. J., Bautista Angelo, Labrador, Concepción, Reyes, J.B.L., Barrera, Paredes, and Makalintal, JJ., concur.