OSCAR SANTOS Y PANGANIBAN, PETITIONER, VS. COURT OF APPEALS AND PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, RESPONDENTS.

Santos versus Court of Appeals

The Case

This is the case of Oscar Santos, who was charged with, convicted of, and ultimately made to answer for two counts of frustrated homicide after hacking two men with a jungle bolo on a footpath in Paombong, Bulacan. He came before the Supreme Court insisting that he acted in complete self-defense, or at the very least in incomplete self-defense with voluntary surrender. The case matters to a reviewee because it gathers in one decision the whole architecture of self-defense: its three requisites, the burden of proof that rests on the accused who admits the act, the rule that unlawful aggression is indispensable, and the deference owed to the factual findings of the trial court as affirmed by the Court of Appeals.

Procedural History

Two Informations for frustrated homicide were filed against the petitioner before the Regional Trial Court of Malolos, Bulacan, Branch 9, one for the hacking of Roy de Borja and another for the hacking of Loreto Hernandez. At arraignment, assisted by counsel, he pleaded not guilty, and the two cases were tried jointly. The trial court rendered judgment convicting him in both cases of frustrated homicide, giving scant consideration to his plea of self-defense but crediting in his favor the mitigating circumstance of voluntary surrender. He appealed his conviction to the Court of Appeals, which affirmed the trial court in full, finding no reversible error and characterizing his claim of self-defense as unsubstantiated. He moved for reconsideration, and the Court of Appeals denied the motion. He then came to the Supreme Court by petition for review on certiorari.

Facts

At around seven in the evening of May 15, 1990, Loreto Hernandez, a security guard at the Manila Hotel, and his companion Roy de Borja were walking home along a narrow footpath in Paombong, Bulacan, coming from a visit to a mutual friend. As they reached the portion of the footpath in front of the house of Rufino Panganiban, the petitioner Oscar Santos and his brother Pedro Santos, Junior suddenly appeared and blocked their way. Hernandez greeted the petitioner by name, but without warning Pedro, Junior aimed a .45 caliber automatic pistol at Hernandez and squeezed the trigger, which fortunately did not fire. The petitioner then hacked Hernandez twice with a jungle bolo, first on the right forearm which Hernandez raised to parry the blow, and then on the right side of the head. Hernandez fell to the ground semi-conscious, blood oozing from his wounds.

The petitioner then turned to de Borja, who tried to flee, and stabbed him at the back near the waistline. De Borja fell, and as he lay on the ground he saw the petitioner hack another person. The petitioner then told his brother that they should leave, saying that their victims were already dead. After the two left, de Borja, though himself injured, helped Hernandez to his feet, and the two crossed a river and reached the barangay road. Hernandez was brought to a clinic in Paombong, was refused admission, and was then taken to the provincial hospital in Malolos, where he received blood transfusion and first aid. He was later transferred to the Jose Reyes Memorial Medical Center in Manila, where he underwent surgery for a complete fracture of the ulnar bone of his right forearm and remained confined until June 5. Because of massive infection, he underwent a second operation in December 1990. De Borja sustained a fifteen-centimeter hacking wound at the right posterior lumbar region that penetrated the diaphragm and the right lobe of the liver, requiring medical attention for more than thirty days.

For his part, the petitioner interposed self-defense. He claimed that a group of men, including Hernandez and de Borja, had earlier gathered outside his house, shouted threats, and stoned it, breaking window panes; that he slipped out the back door to seek help from barangay officials; and that on his way home he met the group on the footpath, where Hernandez drew what appeared to be a gun and aimed it at his head while a companion urged Hernandez to shoot. He claimed he hacked Hernandez's outstretched arm with his bolo, and then swung the bolo to keep his other attackers at bay, and that the tip of the bolo must have hit de Borja as the group fled. The defense even presented a black plastic toy gun, recovered near a creek, as the weapon Hernandez had aimed at him.

Issues

• Whether or not the Court of Appeals erred in not acquitting the petitioner on his plea of complete self-defense.
• Whether or not the Court of Appeals erred in not appreciating in his favor the mitigating circumstances of incomplete self-defense and voluntary surrender.
• Whether or not the Court of Appeals erred in not finding that the prosecution failed to prove the propriety and factual basis of any civil liability for the crimes charged.

Applicable Provisions

The decision applies the requisites of self-defense as a justifying circumstance, which the Court states as follows:

To merit approbation, the accused is burdened to prove with clear and convincing evidence the confluence of the following essential requisites for self-defense: (a) there was unlawful aggression on the part of the victim; (b) that the means employed to prove or repel such aggression was reasonable; and (c) there was lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending himself.

These requisites frame the entire case, because the petitioner admitted inflicting the injuries and staked his liberty on proving all three.

The Court also fixes what unlawful aggression means:

Unlawful aggression contemplates an actual, sudden and unexpected attack on the life and limb of a person or an imminent anger thereof; and not merely a threatening or intimidating attitude.

This definition controls the outcome, since the Court found no unlawful aggression on the part of the victims.

And the Court states the consequence of its absence:

There can be no self-defense, complete or incomplete, where there is no unlawful aggression on the part of the victim.

This forecloses the petitioner's alternative plea of incomplete self-defense.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the petitioner failed to prove complete self-defense. Self-defense is inherently a weak defense that can easily be fabricated, and the accused must prove its requisites by clear and convincing evidence. More importantly, the accused who admits inflicting the injury must rely on the strength of his own evidence and not on the weakness of the prosecution's, for even if the prosecution's evidence were weak, it can no longer be disbelieved after the accused has admitted the act. The Court stressed that whether the accused acted in self-defense is essentially a question of fact best addressed to the trial court, and that the trial court's findings, its calibration of testimonial evidence, and its assessment of probative weight, especially when affirmed by the Court of Appeals, are accorded high respect, if not conclusive effect, absent a showing that cogent facts and circumstances of substance were ignored or misconstrued. Here, both lower courts found the prosecution's version credible and the petitioner's story too good to be true, noting that he was the one with a grudge, having been stabbed by Hernandez years earlier in Pasay City, and that his account of a toy gun and a daring defense resembled an action movie. The Court found no basis to deviate from those findings.

On the second issue, the Court held that incomplete self-defense cannot obtain, because unlawful aggression, the indispensable first requisite, was absent. The Court also noted that the trial court had already credited voluntary surrender in the petitioner's favor, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction as it stood.

On the third issue, the Court sustained the awards of actual damages for medical expenses and lost earnings, these having been established by the evidence, and affirmed the conviction in both cases.

Doctrine

Self-defense, whether complete or incomplete, requires the concurrence of three requisites: unlawful aggression on the part of the victim, reasonable means employed to prevent or repel it, and lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending himself. Unlawful aggression means an actual, sudden, and unexpected attack on the life and limb of a person, or an imminent threat of such an attack, and not a mere threatening or intimidating attitude. Where there is no unlawful aggression, there can be no self-defense, complete or incomplete. The accused who admits inflicting the injury bears the burden of proving self-defense by clear and convincing evidence, and must rely on the strength of his own evidence, not on the weakness of the prosecution's. Finally, the factual findings of the trial court on credibility and on whether self-defense was established, especially when affirmed by the Court of Appeals, are binding on the Supreme Court absent grave misapprehension of facts.

Disposition

The Supreme Court denied the petition and affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals, which had affirmed in full the conviction of Oscar Santos for two counts of frustrated homicide, together with the awards of damages.

Remember This

Memorize the line that no unlawful aggression means no self-defense, complete or incomplete, and that the accused who admits the act must prove self-defense on the strength of his own evidence. Examiners use this case to test the requisites of self-defense, the burden of proof on the accused, and the conclusiveness of the trial court's factual findings on credibility.