THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. SANTOS RAMOS, PEDRO ALEMANIA, LUCILO ESMA AND ALFONZO ESMA, DEFENDANTS AND APPELLANTS.

Appeal from a decision of
the Court of First Instance of Surigao the dispositive portion of which is as follows:

“WHEREFORE, the Court hereby finds the accused, SANTOS RAMOS,
LUCILO ESMA, PEDRO ALEMANIA and
ALFONSO ESMA, guilty, beyond reasonable
doubt, of the crime of Murder, defined and penalized under Art. 248 of the Revised Penal Code, with the accused Santos Ramos as principal, and the accused Lucilo Esma, Pedro Alemania and Alfonso Esma as
accomplices, and there being no mitigating nor aggravating circumstances to
consider for or against said accused, and applying the provisions of the
Indeterminate Sentence Law as regards the accomplices, imposes upon the accused
Santos Ramos the penalty of
RECLUSION PERPETUA, and upon Lucilo Esma, Pedro Alemania and Alfonso Esma, the pe­nalty of not less than TEN (10) YEARS of prision mayor, as
minimum; to not more than SEVENTEEN (17) YEARS and FOUR (4) MONTHS, of RECLUSION TEMPORAL; both with the accessory penalties provided by law;
to indemnify jointly end severally the heirs of the victim in the sum of P6,000.00; plus the costs.  All the accused are to be credited with
one-half of the detention period.”

The evidence shows that appellant Alfonso Esma
was a resident of Barrio Magpayang, Mainit, Surigao del Norte, where he owned
end operated a restaurant.  Living with
him in the house where such business was conducted were his cousin, appellant Lucilo Esma, and their
co-appellants Santos Ramos end Pedro Alemania, the
three being Alfonso’s helpers.

Early in the evening of January 24, 1960, a man known as Feling
entered the restaurant in a drunken condition. 
Probably
to avoid untoward incidents in his eating place, Alfonso pushed him
outside with such violence that Feling fell to the
ground.  It was soon thereafter that Agapito Montaner, Jr. also
entered the restaurant.  Thinking
probably that the new arrival was the same person ousted som­time before or
that he was also in a drunken condition, Lucilo Esma approached him and put his right arm over his left
shoulder.  Apparently Agapito
did not like this
for he tried to free himself, but while Lucilo
still had his right arm over Agapito’s shoulder,
appellant Santos Ramos approached him from behind and thrust a double-bladed
dagger into the left side of his body.  
Immediately thereafter, appellant Pedro Alemania
also attacked Agapito with fist blows on the
face, while Alfonso Erma pushed him toward outside the restaurant, this also
causing the victim to fall on the pavement face upward and shouting for help.

Agapito was then taken by some
passersby to the house of the
Barrio Lieutenant and later to a hospital where he died fifteen minutes after
arrival due to hemorrhage as a result of the wound inflicted upon him.  He also snowed a contusion on the left lower jaw
(Exhibits A and B, Medical Certificate and Certificate of Death, respectively).

As against the foregoing, tree defense’ version of the incident
runs as follows:

That on the evening in question a drunkard known as Feling entered Alfonso Esma’s
restaurant asking the people therein: 
“Who is tough
here?”; that Pedo Alemania
answered him saying that nobody in the place was tough, but that he should get
out because he was drunk, at
the same time giving him a violent push which caused him to stumble; that
Alfonso Esma then
appeared and also told Feling to go home; that Lucilo Esma then came and he led Feling outside; that at that juncture Agapito
Montaner, Jr. arrived also asking “Who is tough
here among you?”, and as nobody answered, he hit Santos Ramos on the
stomach and attempted to pick up a big
stone; that as he was in the act of picking up the stone, Santos Ramos stabbed
him on the left side of the
body.

Even in accordance with the defense version, therefore, it is a
fact that Santos Ramos stabbed the deceased Agapito Montaner, Jr. on the left side of the body – the wound thus
inflicted having caused his death soon thereafter.

The other aspects of the
story given by appellants and their witnesses, however, can not stand against, much less overcome the
findings invade by the judge a quo who, after a careful consideration of the
evidence of record, stated them briefly as follows:

“It has been proven to the full satisfaction of the Court that
in the fatal day in question Agapito Montañer, Jr., suspected to be drunk, was held around the
neck by the accused Lucilo Esma
and as he was struggling to extricate himself, he was given a blow from
behind with a dagger by the accused Santos Ramos hitting the deceased on the
left side piercing his lung end causing his death less than an hour later.  After he had been wounded, the accused Pedro Alemania gave the victim a fistic blow on his face.  And, as if not satisfied with the injury that
had already been inflicted on the deceased,
the owner of the restaurant, the accused Alfonso Esma,
pushed Montañer, Jr. out of the restaurant and Agapito
Montañer, Jr. fell on his back to the ground.”

The first and third assignments of error made in appellants’
brief deal exclusively with the alleged insufficiency of the prosecution
evidence and of the evidence as a
whole to support
the above findings and the judgment of conviction.  After a careful consideration of the evidence
of record We find no justification at all to reverse nor even
modify both or
either.

Another question raised by appellants in their brief is that
Santos Ramos, if at all, should have been convicted of homicide only.  This is also untenable in the light of the evidence clearly showing that he
stabbed Agapito Montaner,
Jr. from behind and while the latter was, to a certain degree, helpless because
Lucilo Esma had his right
arm over his left shoulder.  Thus it is
clear that he was attacked treacherously.

WHEREFORE, the appealed decision being in accordance with
law and the evidence, the same is hereby affirmed, with costs, except as to the
indemnity which hereby increased to P12, 000.00.

Concepcion, C.J., Reyes, J.B.L., Makalintal, Zaldivar, Sanchez,
Castro, Fernando, and Capistrano, JJ., concur.