PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. EDWIN PADILLA Y SALES, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.

People versus Padilla

The Case

This is People of the Philippines versus Edwin Padilla y Sales, a criminal appeal from a conviction for homicide. The accused admits that he killed the victim, his own first cousin, but claims he acted in self-defense. The case matters because it gathers into one decision the whole architecture of the self-defense plea — the burden of proof, the indispensable element of unlawful aggression, the use of the res gestae exception to admit the victim's own statement of who shot him, and the effect of wounds and flight on credibility — and then shows how a single mitigating circumstance, provocation by the victim, lowers the penalty even as the conviction stands.

Procedural History

The accused was charged with homicide before the Regional Trial Court, Branch 61, Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental. He was arrested, arraigned in the Ilonggo dialect which he spoke and understood, and with the assistance of counsel entered a plea of not guilty. After pre-trial and trial on the merits, the Regional Trial Court rendered its decision on September 27, 2006, finding him guilty beyond reasonable doubt of homicide and sentencing him under the Indeterminate Sentence Law, with an award of damages to the heirs.

The accused filed a motion for reconsideration, which the prosecution opposed, and the trial court denied it. He then filed a notice of appeal and posted additional bail for his provisional liberty during the pendency of the appeal. The case thus reached the Supreme Court by ordinary appeal, and the Court affirmed the conviction but modified the penalty and the awards of damages.

Facts

On the evening of January 22, 2002, in Sitio Malinog, Barangay Binicuil, Kabankalan City, Negros Occidental, the victim Isabelo Sales, who was the first cousin of the accused, arrived at his own house wounded and bloodied on the left side of his body. When his wife Lolita asked what happened, he told her that the accused had shot him. She embraced him and went out to look for a tricycle, and there she met a neighbor to whom she reported that her husband had been shot.

As she was about to run to another house for help, Lolita saw the accused approaching their house carrying a long homemade shotgun, a sumpak. He shot the victim inside the house through the open window. The victim went out and pursued the accused, who ran across the road toward his own house inside a fenced compound. Lolita then ran to the house of a retired policeman for assistance, and so she did not see what happened next.

What happened next was supplied by the victim's daughter, Lilet. She saw the accused on top of her father, who was already lying on the ground with his legs spread apart, hacking him many times, especially on the face, while saying, in effect, that the victim was fighting back. The autopsy showed multiple hacked wounds on the head, a stab wound at the base of the neck, a gunshot wound on the left side of the body with pellets, and further hacked wounds at the back of the head and the base of the right shoulder. The victim died of hypovolemic shock due to severe hemorrhage from the multiple hacked wounds. The accused, for his part, claimed self-defense: that the victim first shot at him inside the gate of the house he was guarding, that the gun misfired, that he retrieved his own improvised shotgun and fired, and that the victim later followed him into his own yard where they fought with bolos. He sustained fractures and lacerations, and was hospitalized for four days. He was arrested about four months later, in a different municipality.

Issues

• Whether or not the accused proved unlawful aggression on the part of the victim, so as to sustain his plea of self-defense.
• Whether or not the means he employed were reasonably necessary to prevent or repel the aggression.
• Whether or not he acted without sufficient provocation on his part.
• Whether or not he is entitled to the mitigating circumstance of having acted upon an impulse so powerful as naturally to have produced passion or obfuscation.
• Whether or not the trial court erred in concluding that he fled after the incident.
• Whether or not the penalty and the civil liability imposed were proper.

Applicable Provisions

Article 11 of the Revised Penal Code, on self-defense, provides:

Are exempt from criminal liability the following: 1. Anyone who acts in defense of his person or rights, provided that the following circumstances concur: First. Unlawful aggression; Second. Reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel it; Third. Lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending himself.

These are the three elements the accused had to establish by clear and convincing evidence, and their absence defeats the plea.

Article 13 of the Revised Penal Code, on mitigating circumstances, provides:

Are considered mitigating circumstances: 6. That of having acted upon an impulse so powerful as naturally to have produced passion or obfuscation.

The accused invoked this circumstance, and the Court found it inapplicable to a man engaged in a fight.

Article 64 of the Revised Penal Code, on the rules for the application of penalties, provides:

In cases in which the penalties prescribed by law contain three periods, whether it be a single divisible penalty or composed of three different penalties, each one of which forms a period in accordance with the provisions of Article 76 and 77, the courts shall observe for the application of the penalty the following rules, according to whether there are or are no mitigating or aggravating circumstances: 2. When only mitigating circumstance is present in the commission of the act, they shall impose the penalty in its minimum period.

This rule, together with the Indeterminate Sentence Law, fixed the penalty after the Court found the mitigating circumstance of provocation by the victim.

Article 2224 of the New Civil Code, on temperate damages, provides:

Temperate or moderate damages, which are more than nominal but less than compensatory damages, may be recovered when the court finds that some pecuniary loss was suffered but its amount cannot, from the nature of the case, be proved with certainty.

This provision supported the award of temperate damages in place of unproven actual damages.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that unlawful aggression was not proven, and that without it self-defense cannot exist, since there is no attack to prevent or repel. The accused himself admitted the killing, so the burden was on him to establish his plea by credible, clear and convincing evidence. The Court relied on the wife's account that it was the accused who first shot the victim, corroborated by the gunshot wound with pellets on the victim's left arm, and on the daughter's account of the hacking. The victim's statement to his wife, made immediately after the shooting while still under its influence, was admitted as part of the res gestae, an exception to the hearsay rule, because there was a startling occurrence, the statement was made before the declarant had time to contrive, and it concerned the occurrence and its attending circumstances.

On the second issue, the Court held that the nature, number and location of the wounds — multiple hacked wounds on the head, a stab wound at the neck, a gunshot wound — showed a determined effort to kill and not merely to defend. The Court quoted its own settled rule that the nature and number of wounds inflicted by the assailant are constantly and unremittingly considered important indicia which disprove a plea of self-defense. The accused's own injuries did not save him, because where the fight is agreed upon, each of the protagonists is at once assailant and assaulted, and neither can invoke the right of self-defense.

On the third issue, the Court found that what precipitated the incident was the physical intrusion of the victim into the place where the accused lived, and that this intrusion by itself constituted sufficient provocation by the victim, meriting a mitigating circumstance in his favor. Provocation is any unjust or improper conduct of the offended party capable of exciting or irritating anyone, and it is sufficient when it is adequate to excite a person to commit the wrong and proportionate to its gravity.

On the fourth issue, the Court held that the accused was not entitled to passion or obfuscation, because excitement is the natural feeling of all persons engaged in a fight, especially those who had received a beating, and the impulse in that state is not considered in law so powerful as to produce obfuscation sufficient to mitigate liability.

On the fifth issue, the Court upheld the finding of flight: the accused was arrested about four months after the killing, in a different municipality, and although he was hospitalized for four days he never related his story to the police. This conduct betrayed his claim of innocence.

On the sixth issue, the Court applied Article 249 of the Revised Penal Code, which prescribes reclusion temporal for homicide, and Article 64, imposing the penalty in its minimum period because only one mitigating circumstance was present. Under the Indeterminate Sentence Law, the minimum was fixed within the range of prision mayor and the maximum at the minimum period of reclusion temporal. As to civil liability, the Court increased the death indemnity to 75,000 pesos, affirmed moral damages of 50,000 pesos, and awarded temperate damages of 25,000 pesos in place of actual damages, which were not proven. It deleted the award of 1,120,000 pesos for loss of income, because indemnification for loss of earning capacity must be duly proven by competent proof, and the wife had merely related the victim's daily income as a tricycle driver. It imposed interest at six percent on the damages from the date of the killing to finality of the judgment, and twelve percent per annum from finality until paid.

Doctrine

• When the accused admits killing the victim but invokes self-defense, the burden shifts to him to establish the plea by credible, clear and convincing evidence; otherwise conviction follows from his admission.
• Unlawful aggression is the condition sine qua non of self-defense; if no unlawful aggression is proved, no self-defense may be successfully pleaded, even if the other elements are present.
• The nature, number, location and extent of the wounds are important indicia that may disprove self-defense, since they reveal a determined effort to kill rather than to defend.
• A statement made by the victim immediately after a startling occurrence, before he had time to contrive, identifying his assailant, is admissible as part of the res gestae, an exception to the hearsay rule.
• Where a fight is agreed upon, each protagonist is at once assailant and assaulted, and neither may invoke self-defense.
• Excitement in the course of a fight is not the passion or obfuscation that mitigates liability under Article 13 of the Revised Penal Code.
• The victim's physical intrusion into the place where the accused lives may constitute sufficient provocation, a mitigating circumstance under Article 64 that lowers the penalty to its minimum period.
• Loss of earning capacity partakes of the nature of actual damages and must be proved by competent proof; absent such proof, temperate damages under Article 2224 of the New Civil Code may be awarded instead.

Disposition

The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction for homicide but modified the judgment, imposing an indeterminate penalty of six years and one day of prision mayor as minimum to twelve years and one day of reclusion temporal as maximum, ordering the accused to pay the heirs death indemnity of 75,000 pesos, moral damages of 50,000 pesos and temperate damages of 25,000 pesos, with interest at six percent from the killing to finality and twelve percent per annum thereafter, and deleting the award for loss of income, with costs against the accused.

Remember This

Memorize the line that unlawful aggression is the condition sine qua non of self-defense, so that without it the plea fails no matter how many wounds the accused himself suffered. Examiners use this case for the burden of proof in self-defense, the res gestae admission of a victim's dying statement, the wound-pattern test, and the rule that the victim's intrusion can be sufficient provocation that lowers the penalty.