PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. ROLANDO CENTENO, ET AL., DEFENDANTS, ROLANDO CENTENO, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

It all started, innocuously
enough, with a drinking spree.  On that
afternoon of December 1, 1968, Rolando Santos was enjoying himself with some
friends and plenty of beer that he
eventually could not carry.  Within the
hour, he would be dead of a massive brain hemorrhage.  The venue would be the municipal building
itself.  And the police chief himself,
together with one of his policemen, would be accused of murdering him.

How Santos died is the question we have to settle.  The prosecution says he was killed with
karate blows dealt by the accused-appellant. 
The defense denies this.  It says Santos drunkenly staggered and fell and hit his
head and bled to death.

The trial court believed
the prosecution and convicted the police chief while absolving his co-accused.^[1] Rolando Centeno is
now before us on appeal of his conviction.

The medical evidence is not disputed. 
It is accepted that Santos died as a result of internal bleeding in the brain due to trauma.  The
victim’s head showed various contusions and abrasions but not in the nape of the neck where the karate blows were allegedly delivered.^[2]

Besides Dr. Plaridel F. Vidal, the NBI medico-legal officer who
testified on the autopsy of Santos, two important witnesses who gave a first-hand version of how Santos was allegedly killed by the
accused-appellant were presented by the prosecution.  These were Dionisio
Violago and Eulogio
Villanueva, who were both friends of the victim.

According to Violago, he and Santos, together with their other companions, were
in the store of one Aling Goreng
when Patrolman Valeriano Reyes approached Santos and told the young man to come with
him.  Santos demurred, protesting that he had done
nothing wrong, whereupon Reyes boxed him in the chest and forcibly brought him
to the police station.  There Santos loudly objected to his detention, prompting
Police Chief Centeno to say, “Matigas
ka yatang talaga,”
although he relented later and allowed him to go home.  But as Santos
was leaving, Centeno
had a change of mind and asked Reyes to bring Santos back. 
Reyes was holding Santos’s
arm when Centeno administered the first karate blow
on the nape of Santos’s neck that
made the victim fall forward on the backrest of a bench.  This was followed by two more karate blows
that crumpled him to the cement floor where he lay prostrate and
motionless.  On Centeno’s
order, two policemen then picked up Santos
and took him inside the locker room adjacent to the municipal jail.^[3]

Villanueva corroborated Violago and
said he cried out, “Why are you doing this to my friend?” when he saw
Santos being mauled by Centeno.  He also
declared that Santos was felled
with three karate blows from Centeno.  This witness claimed he got a glass of water
and gave it to Santos, who could
not drink it any more as he was already dying then.  He felt Santos’s
pulse but there was none.  He opened Santos’s
shirt and put his ear to his chest but could hear no heartbeat.  He said that the other persons who witnessed
the killing, besides the policemen, were Violago, Romy Salao and Serafin Punzalan.^[4]

The theory of the
defense was that Santos was so
intoxicated that he reeled and fell and hit his head and suffered the internal
brain hemorrhage that killed him.  To
support this claim, it introduced Mercedes Bautista, chief forensic chemist of
the NBI, who testified that at the time of Santos’s
death he had 0.21% of alcohol in his blood. 
She declared on cross-examination that the effect of such quantity would vary according to the person’s
physical condition although there would surely be emotional instability in
every case.^[5]

The defense conjectured
that as a result of his inebriation, Santos must have crashed down and hurt his head,
resulting in internal bleeding.  Valeriano Reyes, the other accused, testified that after
they had brought Santos to the locker room, they heard a noise (“kalabog“)
suggesting that Santos had hit something; and sure enough they found him dying on the floor
when they went in to investigate.^[6] It is doubtful though how they could have
heard the alleged sound, considering the thick concrete walls of the room and
the fact that they were then some ten meters away.^[7]

There is also the
argument that no external injuries were found on the nape of the neck, where the karate blows were administered although
there were abrasions and contusions elsewhere in the victim’s head.  As Dr. Vidal explained, however, even if no
marks were left on the neck, karate blows thereon could cause the generalized
and extensive bleedings that caused the victim’s death.  Thus:

Q.   Will you please explain,
if a karate blow delivered on the nape of a person without necessarily
producing contusions or abrasions will cause brain hemorrhage?

A.    Depending
on the position of the fist that one will apply on the person.  A karate blow will produce inner injury but
without any outside injury especially this portion of the hand, (witness
pointing to the hypothenar) unlike this portion
(witness pointing to the knuckles) and especially when the karate blows
delivered with the hypothenar on a muscular portion
of the body like the nape, there will be no external injuries but the injury is
internal.  To further explain, I will
cite to you an example.  The boxers who
use gloves on their hands and when they will deliver blows on a person, that
person will not sustain external injuries but there is severe injury inside the
brain and that could justify that karate blows will not produce external
injuries but internal injuries.^[8]

The defense itself
submitted that Santos shouted drunkenly within hearing distance of Centeno
and Reyes, “Putang inang
mga pulis iyan! Walang kuwenta
sa akin iyan!”^[9] They claimed to be tolerant and simply
admonished him to go home, but subsequent events showed they were really
annoyed by his remarks.  This was the
motive that prompted Reyes to drag Santos to the municipal building and led Centeno later to kill him.

We are satisfied that Violago and Villanueva were telling the truth about
the killing of their friend although there were indeed inconsistencies in their
statements.  These were minor lapses only and did not
impair the essential truthfulness of their narrations.  As for the defense, its explanation of the
death of Santos while he was in the custody of the police is hardly plausible and mainly
speculative.  Murder cannot be excused on
such improbable conjectures.

Murder it was indeed with
the qualifying circumstance of treachery. 
There was alevosia because Santos was suddenly attacked from behind when in
his weakened and intoxicated condition, coupled with the fact that his arm was
then being held by Reyes, he
could not defend himself.  The
accused-appellant had employed means aimed at achieving his purpose without
risk to himself from any defense the victim could have made.

Even assuming there was
abuse of superior strength, on which issue we do not have to rule here, this aggravating circumstance is deemed absorbed
by treachery.  As for the mitigating
circumstances claimed by the defense, the Court holds that they cannot be
allowed.  The derogatory statement made
by Santos which so irritated Certeno did not
constitute such a grave provocation as to warrant the lessening of his penalty
for reacting as he did in punishing
the victim to death.  Neither can Centeno argue now that he had not intended to commit so
grave a wrong as the actual killing of Santos as he
knew, or should have known, that the karate chops on the nape of the neck would
have a lethal effect upon the defenseless and drunken victim.

There being no generic
aggravating or mitigating circumstances, the term of imprisonment was correctly
fixed at reclusion perpetua, the medium
penalty for murder.  The civil indemnity is, however, increased to
P30,000.00 consistent with present policy.

It was not only Rolando Santos who was intoxicated when he died at 22 on December
1, 1968.  There was another kind of drunkenness that
afflicted the chief of police, who misused
his power and lawlessly took a
life.

WHEREFORE, the appealed judgment is AFFIRMED
except as to the civil indemnity, which is increased to P30,000.00.  Costs against the accused-appellant.  It is so ordered.

Narvasa, (Chairman), Gancayco, Griño-Aquino, and Medialdea, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Rollo, pp. 21-42. Decision penned by Judge
Carlos L. Sundiam.

^[2]
Original Records, p. 194.

^[3]
TSN, July 2, 1969, pp.
88-109; July 3, 1969, pp.
32-39.

^[4]
TSN, September 17, 1969, pp. 2-7; pp. 14-16.

^[5]
TSN, February 23, 1970, p.
2; p. 9.

^[6]
TSN, June 24, 1970, pp.
4-5.

^[7]
Rollo, p. 36.

^[8]
TSN, November 20, 1969,
pp. 30-31.

^[9]
TSN, August 5, 1970, p. 19.