PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. ROLANDO TABANGGAY, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.

People versus Tabanggay

The Case

This is the People of the Philippines against Rolando Tabanggay, a criminal prosecution for three counts of qualified rape — one against his daughter Rynalyn and two against his other daughter Genalyn — decided by the Supreme Court in June 2000. The case matters because the Court affirms the conviction on the strength of the victims' testimony, yet strikes down the death penalty for a precise evidentiary reason: the minority of the victims, which qualifies the crime and raises the penalty, was never proven by competent evidence. It is, in short, a lecture on how the qualifying circumstances of relationship and age must be both alleged and proved.

Procedural History

Three separate Informations, all dated July 18, 1995, charged the appellant with rape — once against Rynalyn, then fourteen years old, and twice against Genalyn, then thirteen years old. On September 7, 1995, with the assistance of counsel de oficio, the appellant pleaded not guilty. The prosecution and the defense agreed to a joint trial of the three cases because common witnesses were to be presented. The Regional Trial Court of Calapan, Oriental Mindoro, Branch 39, rendered a Joint Decision dated May 16, 1997, convicting the appellant on three counts of qualified rape and sentencing him to death for each count. The case went to the Supreme Court on automatic review, and the appellant assigned a single error: that the trial court erred in finding him guilty of rape on three counts.

Facts

On May 14, 1994, at around two o'clock in the morning, Rynalyn Tabanggay, then turning fourteen, was sleeping inside a nipa hut in Santa Mesa, Victoria, Oriental Mindoro, beside her sister Everlyn. She awoke to find her father kissing and hugging her and telling her to keep still. He touched her breasts and her private parts. She pleaded for mercy, but he told her, in substance, that he loved her and that before others benefited, he would first. When she tried to wake her sister, he boxed her and she lost consciousness. When she came to, her body ached, her knees trembled, and she saw her private organ bleeding. He followed her out and threatened to kill her if she told anyone. Fearing the threat, she kept silent, later left home, and worked as a housemaid in Manila. In August 1994 she wrote her mother, Gundina, a letter revealing the rape. Confronted, the appellant bowed his head, could not look his wife in the eye, and admitted he had committed something wrong to her and to his daughter. Rynalyn was examined by a physician, who found hymenal lacerations.

Sometime in February 1995, Genalyn, then turning thirteen, was inside a room with six of her siblings when the appellant approached her, told her to keep quiet, touched her private parts, kissed her on the left cheek, and inserted his penis into her vagina. She cried, and he told her to keep quiet. The assault was repeated on March 19, 1995, at around one o'clock in the morning, when he placed himself on top of her and tried to insert his penis into her vagina, threatening to kill her if she did not keep quiet. Her sister Rosalyn was awakened by her crying, and later told their mother. Genalyn was also examined, and the physician found hymenal lacerations.

The defense rested on alibi and denial. The appellant claimed he was sleeping in a patio outside the hut with companions on the first occasion, and was elsewhere in the ricefield or in another barangay on the others. He suggested the charges were filed because of bad blood — his failure to provide for the family and suspicion over money his wife and daughters were receiving from a relative. The trial court convicted him on all three counts, finding the qualifying circumstance that the victims were under eighteen and the offender was their parent, and imposed three death penalties.

Issues

• Whether or not the testimony of the private complainants was sufficient and credible to sustain the conviction for rape on three counts.
• Whether or not the qualifying circumstances of the victims' minority and the appellant's relationship to them were sufficiently alleged and proven to warrant the death penalty.

Applicable Provisions

Article 335 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended by Section 11 of Republic Act Number 7659, defines and penalizes rape, and the decision applies it to the three counts:

Article 335. When and how rape is committed. — Rape is committed by having carnal knowledge of a woman under any of the following circumstances: 1. By using force or intimidation; 2. When the woman is deprived of reason or otherwise unconscious; and 3. When the woman is under twelve years of age or is demented. The crime of rape shall be punished by reclusion perpetua. Whenever the crime of rape is committed with the use of a deadly weapon or by two or more persons, the penalty shall be reclusion perpetua to death. When by reason or on the occasion of the rape, the victim has become insane, the penalty shall be death. When the rape is attempted or frustrated and a homicide is committed by reason or on the occasion thereof, the penalty shall be reclusion perpetua to death. When by reason or on the occasion of the rape, a homicide is committed, the penalty shall be death. The death penalty shall also be imposed if the crime of rape is committed with any of the following attendant circumstances: 1. When the victim is under eighteen (18) years of age and the offender is a parent, ascendant, step-parent, guardian, relative by consanguinity or affinity within the third civil degree, or the common-law spouse of the parent of the victim.

This is the provision under which the appellant was convicted, and its final paragraph is the qualifying circumstance — minority plus relationship — that the Court holds must be alleged and proven.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court affirmed the conviction. It recalled the settled guiding principles in rape prosecutions: that to accuse a man of rape is easy but to disprove it is difficult though he may be innocent; that the complainant's testimony should be scrutinized with great caution; and that the evidence for the prosecution must stand or fall on its own merit. Yet it also held that as long as the complainant's testimony meets the test of credibility, the accused may be convicted on the basis thereof. Scrutinizing the records, the Court found the testimonies of Rynalyn and Genalyn straightforward, candid, and spontaneous, and found no reason to deviate from the trial court's findings. Delay in reporting was explained by the appellant's death threats, and the Court held that such threats justify delay. His plea for forgiveness at the police station, analogous to an offer to compromise, was received as an implied admission of guilt, and his bowing of the head before his wife amounted to an admission.

On the second issue, however, the Court reduced the penalty to reclusion perpetua. The Court held that in accusations involving incestuous rape, the relationship of the accused with the offended party as well as the latter's age must be alleged in the information and proven by the prosecution with competent evidence during the trial. Here, a bare photocopy of the victim's Birth Certificate, neither certified nor formally offered in evidence, was not sufficient proof of her age. Hence the qualifying circumstance that would have raised the penalty to death was not established, and the penalty was reduced accordingly.

Doctrine

Two rules must be retained. First, the credibility of a complainant's testimony, when straightforward, candid, and spontaneous, may by itself sustain a conviction for rape; delay in reporting is excused where the rapist threatened the victim's life, and a plea for forgiveness is an implied admission of guilt. Second, and decisively for the bar, the qualifying circumstances of minority and relationship in incestuous rape must be alleged in the information and proven by competent evidence during trial — a bare, uncertified photocopy of a birth certificate not formally offered in evidence does not prove age. Without proof of the qualifying circumstance, the penalty cannot be raised to death.

Disposition

The Court affirmed the appellant's guilt for rape on three counts but reduced the penalty to reclusion perpetua, because the minority of the private complainants was not sufficiently proven.

Remember This

Memorize this line: in incestuous rape, relationship and age must be alleged in the information and proven with competent evidence, and an uncertified, unoffered photocopy of a birth certificate proves nothing. Examiners use this case to test the distinction between the crime of rape and the qualifying circumstance that raises its penalty, and the evidentiary standard for proving a victim's age.