THE UNITED STATES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. WENCESLAO DACQUEL, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

On the evening of July 21, 1915, some of the Roman Catholic inhabitants of
the barrio of Sococ in the Province of Ilocos Sur were having a religious
procession, praying to San Roque for rain. There were a considerable number of
men, women, and children in the procession, among them Simeona Casabar, a girl
about 9 years of age. It was a clear night and many of the people carried
candles. The accused, Wenceslao Dacquel, who was a teniente (lieutenant) of the
barrio, seems to have been angered because the procession was had without his
consent or authorization. As the procession passed near a mound of earth at the
side of the street, the accused suddenly appeared at the head of the procession
and cried, “Halt!” The procession stopped, and the accused demanded to
know why the people were holding a procession without his consent. Immediately
thereafter he cried “en cuadrilla” (all together), and three men sprang out from
the side of the road, and together with the accused began to disperse the people
who had taken part in the procession. The accused struck the 9-year old girl,
Simeona Casabar, with his cane on the right arm at, or near the elbow. As a
result of the blow, the elbow would appear to have been dislocated, and
certainly the arm swelled up nearly twice its natural size, so that, although it
was treated by the health officer of the municipality, she was unable to use it
for more than thirty days.

The foregoing statement of fact is conclusively established by the evidence
of record, notwithstanding the attempt of the accused to prove an alibi, which
the trial judge very properly rejected as utterly unworthy of credence.

The court below found the accused guilty as charged of the crime of grave
physical injuries (lesiones graves), but being of opinion that the
“offender had no intention to commit so great a wrong as that committed,” took
that fact into consideration as an extenuating circumstance (subsection 3,
article 9, Penal Code) and imposed upon the convict the penalty of four months
and one day of arresto mayor, that is to say, the prescribed penalty in
its minimum degree.

The Attorney-General urges that the trial judge erred in the application of
this provision of the Code, and suggests that the penalty should have been
imposed in its maximum degree in view of the tender age and the sex of the
offended person (subsection 20 of article 10, Penal Code). We do not think,
however, that, upon the whole record, we would be justified in disturbing the
action of the trial judge. The severity of the injury inflicted appears to have
resulted from the fact that the stick happened to fall upon the child’s elbow,
with the result that a blow, which ordinarily would have done no serious
mischief, produced results which were neither intended nor anticipated by the
accused. The stick was about the size and weight of an ordinary walking cane,
and, doubtless, the accused laid about him in the crowd, in his efforts to make
it disperse, without any thought or intention of doing any of the people any
serious injury, or of heaping contumely or insult upon the child because of her
sex or her tender age.

Our affirmance of the action of the trial judge in taking into consideration
the above mentioned extenuating circumstance and imposing the prescribed penalty
in its minimum degree must not be understood as condoning or minimizing the
manifest illegality of the conduct of the accused in his wholly unauthorized use
of physical force to disperse the procession. The conduct of this village
tyrant, clothed with the brief authority of his petty office as lieutenant of
his barrio, could not well be condemned too severely, even if his
officious intermeddling with his neighbors’ religious activities had not had as
its outcome the infliction of so grave an injury upon the girl who suffered at
his hands. But in this proceeding we are limited to a consideration of his
criminal conduct in the infliction of the grave physical injuries charged in the
information; and he is entitled, in this connection, to have taken into
consideration in his favor, any of the mitigating circumstances mentioned in
Chapter III of the Penal Code, which appear to have accompanied the commission
of the crime, notwithstanding the evidence disclosing the highly reprehensible
conduct of which he was guilty in other respects, at the time when the assault
was made.

We find no error in the proceedings prejudicial to the substantial rights of
the accused, and we conclude, therefore, that the judgment convicting and
sentencing the appellant in the court below should be affirmed with the costs of
this instance against him. So ordered.

Arellano, C. J., Johnson,
Araullo, and Street, JJ., concur.

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MALCOLM, J., concurring:

I concur. I only object to the following uncalled for remark in the majority
decision:

“The conduct of this village tyrant, clothed with the brief authority of his
petty office as lieutenant of his barrio, could not well be condemned too
severely, even if his officious intermeddling with his neighbors’ religious
activities had not had as its outcome the infliction of so grave an injury upon
the girl who suffered at his hands.”

The municipal council is authorized to regulate the use of the streets. Under
this power, in the opinion of a former Governor-General, “The common council may
regulate or prohibit the use of the public streets for religious or other
processions if, in the judgment of the council, such processions interfere with
the proper use of the streets by the general public, but such regulations or
prohibition should be made only in good faith with a view to the public interest
and not to gratify any personal or political feeling.” In the present case, it
is not affirmatively shown that such an ordinance existed in the municipality of
which the barrio of Sococ, Ilocos Sur, is a part. But the fact that such an
ordinance could be enacted should mitigate the verbal chastisement of a
peace officer who mistakenly attempts to assume this authority.

Again, a lieutenant of a barrio may only be a “village tyrant clothed with
the brief authority of his petty office,” but an equally high authority, Justice
Carson, in U. S. vs. Fortaleza ([1909], 12 Phil. Rep., 472), has the
following to say of him:

“To say that ‘each of the members of the council shall be put in
immediate charge of a barrio or part of barrio, so that each barrio
shall be under the direction of one or more councilors’ and that each
barrio is placed ‘under the immediate supervision of a councilor,’ would seem
necessarily to imply a grant of some degree of control over the conduct of
the residents of the barrio by the councilor placed in charge thereof. * *
* and keeping ‘in mind, first, the imperative necessity for providing for
the maintenance of order in each of these barrios, many of which are
located at long distances from the centers of population, where the municipal
officials reside; second, the fact that nowhere else in the Act is any provision
made for the appointment of peace officers for the various barrios with the
necessary authority to maintain order; and, third, the fact that under the
municipal system which was superseded by the system provided in this Act,
municipal councilors and their lieutenants placed in charge of particular
barrios were always recognized as agentes de la autoridad and
clothed with the necessary authority for the maintenance of order and
the protection of life and property; we think that the Commission, in providing
for the assignment of one or more councilors in charge of each barrio or part of
barrio, so that each barrio shall be under the direction of one or more
councilors, must be taken to have entrusted to these councilors and their
lieutenants a duty of maintaining order within their respective
barrios, substantially similar to that which was imposed upon municipal
councilors under the Spanish law existing at the time of the promulgation of the
Act, and thus to have conferred upon, or confirmed to them the functions of
agentes de la autoridad (agents of authority) within their respective
barrios, with the necessary authority incident thereto for the maintenance
of order and the protection of life and property.”