THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. FELIPE YTURRIAGA, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

The appellant was charged with murder In the Court of First
Instance of Samar allegedly with two aggravating circumstances.
Arraigned, the accused pleaded guilty except as to the generic
aggravating circumstances of evident premeditation and taking advantage
of his position as municipal mayor charged in the information. At the
same time, he invoked the mitigating circumstances of plea of guilty, drunkenness and voluntary surrender, which he offered to prove.

Evidence was received thereafter to determine the presence of
modifying circumstances for and against the accused, and upon the
evidence thus presented, the court handed down a decision of the
following tenor:

“The court accepts the plea of guilt of the accused
and declares him guilty beyond doubt of the crime of murder with which
he is charged with the concurrence of the aggravating circumstance of
premeditation and his plea of guilty as mitigating. There being one
aggravating circumstance which is compensated by one mitigating, the
penalty to be imposed is the medium penalty. The Court, therefore,
sentences the accused to suffer an imprisonment of reclusion perpetua
with civil interdiction for life and perpetual absolute
disqualification, indemnify the heirs of Jose Balite in the sum of
P4,000 and pay the costs of this action.”

Not satisfied with the decision, the defendant’s counsel filed a
motion for reconsideration with a prayer that “if the said circumstance
of voluntary surrender, which is a matter of record, cannot be taken
into consideration, then on behalf of the accused the undersigned
requests that the plea of guilty be set aside and that this case be set
for trial at the first opportunity.”

Five days later the trial court promulgated an order the dispositive part of which reads:

“The court, therefore, allows the accused to change
his plea of ‘guilty’ to that of ‘not guilty’, voids the sentence
rendered convicting the accused to reclusion perpetua, and orders that the case be set on the calendar for its trial on the merits.”

The defendant being arraigned anew, his counsel manifested that
except for the aggravating circumstance of evident premeditation, their
client was pleading guilty to the charge. At this juncture, the
prosecuting attorney asked if the defendant also was pleading guilty to
the aggravating circumstance of taking advantage of his official
position, but before appellant’s counsel could reply, the trial court
intervened and stated that the only question to be resolved was whether
the aggravating circumstance of evident premeditation and the
mitigating circumstance of voluntary surrender were present in the
commission of the crime. Forthwith, the trial court ordered the parties
to proceed with their evidence, which the parties did. After the
prosecution had rested its case, defense counsel manifested to the
court that they had inadvertently forgotten to state at the opening of
the hearing that the accused did not plead guilty to the aggravating
circumstance of taking advantage of his official position, and for that
reason moved that it be excluded from appellant’s plea of guilty.
.After a brief discussion, the court denied the petition.

The appellant makes three assignments of error, all of which deal
with the presence or absence of modifying circumstances and the refusal
of the court below to allow him to prove or disprove some of them. We
will pass over the last point as the evidence actually introduced
enables us to reach a decision on the first.

The Solicitor General believes that there was evident
premeditation, but agrees with the appellant that the defendant did not
take advantage of his position. The Government also agrees that the
appellant should be credited with the mitigating circumstance of
voluntary surrender as well as that of plea of guilty found by the
lower court.

To understand the issues intelligently, it is convenient to set out briefly the facts surrounding the commission of the crime.

It appears that the appellant was municipal mayor of Bobon,
province of Samar. On August 3, 1947, at about k o’clock in the
afternoon, accompanied by a policeman, he raided a house where a game
of monte was being or was to be played. Upon seeing the
accused, the gamblers or would be gamblers fled from the house and were
not arrested, except one whom the defendant caught up with and grabbed.
Mien he emerged from the gambling house, the accused met Jose Balite
walking down the street with a 12-year old daughter. The evidence
disagrees about what occurred, if any, between the defendant and Balite
immediately before the killing; but it is admitted that the defendant
shot and killed Balite with a pistol or revolver treacherously, as
treachery is defined in the Revised Penal Code. It also appears that
Balite had been a rival candidate for mayor and was a political enemy
of the accused.

In finding the concurrence of evident premeditation as a generic
aggravating circumstance, the court relied solely on the testimony of
witnesses that the defendant in a speech In February, 1947, attacked
Jose Balite saying, “You people In San Antonio, you are wild and
savages, and I understand you are the supporters of Jose Balite. But
you must understand that I am now the one in power, and do not rely on
Jose Balite because he is no longer the one in power. This coming
election in 1947, bear in mind, I am going to kill him because I have
also a man whom I confided.”

We do not think that the accused called his audience wild and
savages unless he was out of his mind; and if the witnesses lied in
this respect, there is ground to believe that they may also have lied
or exaggerated with reference to other parts of the defendant’s speech.

However the case may be, the remarks attributed to the accused,
granting he was correctly quoted, are utterly insufficient to warrant
the finding of evident premeditation. It is more reasonable to believe
that the accused made those remarks, if he made them, in a fit of anger
without meaning what he said. It is worth noting that the defendant is
impulsive and hot tempered, as the record abundantly indicates.

In the second place, supposing again that the accused was in
earnest when he made the threat, yet there is no showing that he
persisted in his plan and that the killing was the culmination of it.
It should be kept in mind that the alleged threat was made six months
before Balite was murdered. Living in the same town as the deceased all
that time, the defendant could easily have killed his enemy long before
August) 1947, if he had not given up his determination to slay him.What
the preponderance of evidence does tend strongly to show is that the
accused shot down the deceased as the result of the latter’s alleged
remark on the occasion of the defendant’s raid of the gambling house,
to wits that the defendant was abusing his authority although he was
only an appointive mayor, appointed by President Roxas. We are inclined
to the theory that there was some provocation.

In U.S. vs. Gil, (13 Phil. 530) and other decisions of
this Court, it was laid down as a rule that the circumstance of evident
premeditation must be evident and not merely suspected, by which is
meant “a period sufficient in a judicial sense to afford full
opportunity for meditation and reflection and sufficient to allow the
conscience of the actor to overcome the resolution of his will If he
desires to harken to Its warnings.” Judged by this standard, the
aggravating circumstance of evident premeditation has not been
satisfactorily established in this case.

The allegation that the defendant took advantage of his office is
also unwarranted by the proof. In killing the deceased, the appellant
did not avail himself of “the influence, prestige, or ascendancy
which go with his position as a means of securing the execution of the
crime.” In other words, his being mayor did not in any way facilitate
the murder. He could have committed the crime in the same form or
manner and with the same ease if he had been a plain citizen.

There is no doubt that the appellant gave himself up to the
Philippine Constabulary voluntarily and that this surrender satisfies
the requirement of subsection 7 of Article 13 of the Revised Penal
Code. It only remains to consider briefly whether the defendant’s plea
of guilty in the form it was entered constitutes a voluntary confession
of guilt before the court as defined in the same subsection of Article
13. We think it does.

Although the confession was qualified and introduction of evidence
became necessary, the qualification did not deny the defendant’s guilt
and, what is more, was subsequently fully justified. It was not the
defendant’s fault that aggravating circumstances were erroneously
alleged in the information and mitigating circumstances committed
therefrom. If such qualification could deprive accused of the benefit
of plea of guilty, then the prosecution could nullify this mitigating
circumstance by counteracting it with unfounded allegations of
aggravating circumstances.

In conclusion, there are two mitigating circumstances without any
aggravating circumstances to offset them. ISider Article 64 (5) of the
Revised Penal Code, these circumstances entitle the defendant to a
lowering of the penalty by one degree; the penalty lower by one degree
is prision mayor in its maximum degree to reclusion temporal in its medium degree.

The appealed judgment is modified so that the appellant will be sentenced to eight years and one day of prision mayor, as minimum, and 14 years, eight months and one day of reclusion perpetua, as maximum, and to pay the heirs of the deceased an indemnity of P6,000, and the costs.

Ozaeta, Pablo, Bengzon, Montemayor, and Reyes, JJ., concur.