PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. FLORDELIZA ZAMORA Y SALAR, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.

People versus Zamora

The Case

This is People versus Zamora, a criminal appeal in which the People of the Philippines prosecuted Flordeliza Zamora for child abuse under the Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act, Republic Act Number 7610. The accused is the biological mother of the victim, a two-year-old boy. The charge is that she habitually inflicted maltreatment, cruelty and personal violence upon her own child. The case matters for two reasons a reviewee must hold: it is the cleanest illustration of the exempting circumstance of insanity as a defense that admits the act but denies imputability, and it shows how the Supreme Court weighs a psychiatric report that contradicts itself. It also settles that the Indeterminate Sentence Law applies to this special law because the penalty was borrowed from the Revised Penal Code.

Procedural History

The Regional Trial Court of Makati City, Branch 140, tried the case on the merits after the accused, assisted by counsel de oficio, entered a plea of not guilty. The trial court convicted her of child abuse under Section 10, paragraph a, of Article VI, in relation to Section 3, paragraph b, of Article I of Republic Act Number 7610, and sentenced her to an indeterminate penalty of four years, nine months and eleven days of prision correccional as minimum, to six years, eight months and one day of prision mayor as maximum. From that judgment she appealed directly to the Supreme Court, raising the lone error that the trial court gravely erred in finding her guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The appeal was dismissed and the decision affirmed.

Facts

In July 2009 Flordeliza Zamora and her two-year-old son went to a recruitment agency in Makati, where she applied as a housemaid. She told the agency's stay-in secretary that she had to bring the boy because she had no one to leave him with. The owner allowed mother and son to stay in the agency's quarters. She was eventually hired as a stay-in maid in Pasig City, with one day off a month, and the owner agreed to keep the child at the agency on condition that she stay there during her rest days. While she was at work, the owner, her son and the secretary took turns caring for the boy.

On her first day off in August 2009, the secretary reported that the child had been naughty and had broken things. The mother made him put his hands on the floor, punched his hands for several minutes, and made him kneel for more than an hour. That evening she beat him again upstairs, swelling his hands. On her second day off in September 2009, she fed him while he knelt, flicked his lips until they bled, pinched his stomach and buttocks, and hit him with a hanger until it broke. The beating lasted about five hours. The secretary and the owner's son tried to stop her, but she said she was only teaching him a lesson. The next day the secretary photographed and videoed the child's battered body.

In October 2009 she lost her job and returned to the agency, where the occupants saw her abuse the boy almost daily. On the morning of October 10, 2009, she hit him mercilessly with a hanger while he knelt with arms spread out. The secretary and the owner's son reported the matter to the police and to a women's organization, whose officers took the child that evening. He was brought to the hospital, where the examining physician found redness on the right frontal area, abrasions on the lower lip and neck, multiple redness on the abdomen, and swelling on the right lung area, injuries needing two to three days to heal. The child testified, identifying himself in the photographs and saying his mother hit him with a hanger because he was makulit, or restless. Two psychiatrists testified for the defense that she suffered from schizophrenia, chronic and incurable, existing before the offense. The trial court rejected the defense of insanity.

Issues

• Whether or not the accused was insane at the time of the commission of the crime, so as to be exempt from criminal liability.
• Whether or not the accused was properly convicted of child abuse under Section 10, paragraph a, of Article VI, in relation to Section 3, paragraph b, of Article I of Republic Act Number 7610.
• Whether or not the penalty imposed by the trial court was correct.

Applicable Provisions

Article 12, paragraph 1 of the Revised Penal Code provides:

ART. 12. Circumstances which exempt from criminal liability.—The following are exempt from criminal liability: 1. An imbecile or an insane person, unless the latter has acted during a lucid interval.

This is the exempting circumstance the accused invoked, and it is the provision against which her defense is measured.

Section 10, paragraph a of Article VI of Republic Act Number 7610 provides:

Section 10. Other Acts of Neglect, Abuse, Cruelty or Exploitation and Other Conditions Prejudicial to the Child's Development. – (a) Any person who shall commit any other acts of child abuse, cruelty or exploitation or to be responsible for other conditions prejudicial to the child's development including those covered by Article 59 of Presidential Decree No. 603, as amended, but not covered by the Revised Penal Code, as amended, shall suffer the penalty of prision mayor in its minimum period.

This is the crime charged and the source of the penalty imposed.

Section 3, paragraph b of Article I of the same law defines the act:

Section 3.Definition of Terms. – (b) "Child abuse" refers to the maltreatment, whether habitual or not, of the child which includes any of the following: (1) Psychological and physical abuse, neglect, cruelty, sexual abuse and emotional maltreatment; (2) Any act by deeds or words which debases, degrades or demeans the intrinsic worth and dignity of a child as a human being; (3) Unreasonable deprivation of his basic needs for survival, such as food and shelter; or (4) Failure to immediately give medical treatment to an injured child resulting in serious impairment of his growth and development or in his permanent incapacity or death.

This definition supplies the elements that the prosecution's evidence must satisfy.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the defense of insanity failed. The defense had expressly admitted in open court that the accused hurt the child, and staked everything on insanity. To avail of the exemption, the accused must prove by clear and convincing evidence that she was completely deprived of rationality in committing the act, that she had no consciousness of responsibility for her acts, or that there was a complete absence of the power to discern. Mere abnormality of the mental faculties will not exclude imputability. Insanity must relate to the time preceding or simultaneous with the offense. The Court noted that the law presumes every person of sound mind, so the burden lay on her.

The Court found no conclusive evidence that she was completely deprived of reason. The testimony of the secretary showed she was aware of her acts: each time she beat the boy she said she was teaching him a lesson, that he was makulit, and that he could not count from one to ten. That is the behavior of one who, in a fit of anger and without good judgment, inflicts harm, not of an imbecile or an insane person. The psychiatric report itself was unworthy of credence: the doctors observed her as behaved, responsive, aware of her case and fit to stand trial, yet concluded she was insane. The report was incomplete, resting only on tests and interviews, without inquiry into her history or interviews with family and friends. And the doctors conceded it was possible she had proper judgment at the time of the offense.

On the second issue, the Court sustained the conviction. The testimony of the child, the secretary and the owner's son, and the photographs of the wounds, established the abuse. The child positively identified himself in the photographs and pointed to his mother as his tormentor.

On the third issue, the Court held the penalty correct. The penalty for child abuse is prision mayor in its minimum period. Although Republic Act Number 7610 is a special law, the penalty is derived from and defined in the Revised Penal Code, so the Indeterminate Sentence Law applies just as it would in felonies.

Doctrine

• Insanity as an exempting circumstance under Article 12, paragraph 1 of the Revised Penal Code requires proof by clear and convincing evidence that the accused was completely deprived of reason, had no consciousness of responsibility for her acts, or had a complete absence of the power to discern.
• Mere abnormality of the mental faculties does not exclude imputability; the insanity must exist immediately before or at the time of the commission of the offense.
• Every person is presumed of sound mind, so the accused who pleads insanity bears the burden of overcoming that presumption.
• A psychiatric report based on incomplete facts, or whose observations contradict its conclusions, deserves no evidentiary weight.
• Child abuse under Section 10, paragraph a of Republic Act Number 7610 covers maltreatment, whether habitual or not, including physical abuse of a child.
• Where a special law adopts a penalty from the Revised Penal Code, the Indeterminate Sentence Law applies.

Disposition

The appeal was dismissed and the judgment of conviction and the penalty imposed by the trial court were affirmed in full.

Remember This

The line to memorize is that insanity must completely deprive the accused of reason at the very time of the act, and a self-contradicting psychiatric report cannot carry that burden. Examiners use this case to test the insanity exemption, the presumption of sanity, and the application of the Indeterminate Sentence Law to Republic Act Number 7610.