THE UNITED STATES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. AGUSTIN CASTOR, ISIDORO PALOMADO AND JUAN PALMA, DEFENDANTS AND APPELLANTS.

The three defendants maliciously and voluntarily set fire to, and destroyed,
the house of one Concepcion Castellana, knowing that it was occupied at the
time. The nighttime was selected for the commission of the dastardly deed. The
house was valued at P40. Fifty-five cavanes of palay was stored in the house but
no evidence of the value of this rice was introduced.

These facts, fully established by the proof, fall within the provisions of
article 549 of the Penal Code, and there being present one aggravating
circumstance, offset by no mitigating circumstance, the maximum penalty must be
imposed. While, as suggested in the concurring opinion in the United States
vs. Butardo and Butardo ([1908], 11 Phil., 60), the penalty for arson
in the Spanish Penal Code is of exceptional severity, it is to be remembered
that the enormity of the offense is not measured by the value of the property
that may be destroyed but rather by the human lives exposed to danger. Arson was
considered, and still is considered in a few jurisdictions, to be a capital
offense. At common law, it “was accounted a heinous and exorbitant felony.”
(Poulter’s Case 11 Coke 29a.) Such principles of jurisprudence in
conjunction with the aggravated facts before us, justify the increase of the
sentence of six years handed down by the trial court to life imprisonment.

Judgment is reversed and each defendant and appellant is sentenced to life
imprisonment, to the accessory penalties provided by law, and to pay one third
of the costs of both instances, while the defendants shall jointly and severally
indemnify Concepcion Castellana in the sum of P40. Appellant Castor’s motion for
a new trial is denied, since not supported by affidavits of witnesses and since
no showing of newly discovered evidence material to his defense is made. So
ordered.

Torres, Street, Avanceña, and Fisher, JJ., concur.

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DISSENTING OPINION

ARAULLO, J., dissenting in part:

I do not agree with the majority opinion, insofar as, with respect to the
commission of the crime, it takes account of the aggravating circumstance of
nocturnity, and consequently imposes upon the defendant the penalty in its
maximum degree, to wit, cadena perpetua.

As the Attorney-General says in his brief, the Government has established, by
the evidence taken at the trial, the following facts:

“Engracio de la Cruz, who was a resident of Manila, went, on April 4, 1917,
accompanied by his wife, Feliciana Palermo, to the barrio of Mambiranan,
municipality of Passi, Province of Iloilo, for the purpose of visiting the
parents of his wife. He carried baggage, which people of that barrio went to see
when he took it off the train and conveyed it in a narria [sled] to his
mother-in-law’s house where he took lodging. During his sojourn in the barrio,
his wife, Feliciana Palermo, wore dresses unlike those used by any of the women
of the barrio, and so became quite noticeable. Agustin Castor, one of the herein
defendants, three times visited Engracio de la Cruz at the house of Concepcion
Castellana, his mother-in-law. The first visit was for the purpose of selling
him three big carabaos and a young one, which the defendant did not then bring
with him and which Engracio de la Cruz did not buy. The second visit was for the
purpose of asking him for a loan of P4, which Engracio did not lend the
defendant. The third visit was at 7 o’clock in the evening of the same day, and
was for the purpose of borrowing P2 from him, which, likewise, he did not lend
to Castor. On the following Saturday, April 14, 1917, at 9.30 o’clock at night,
while Engracio, his wife, and her parents were in the house abovementioned and
were getting ready to retire, a group of people came, armed with lances and
bolos and bearing four torches. Two members of the group, Isidoro Palomado and
Juan Palma, two of the herein defendants, approached the door and said: ‘Open
the door!’ As the door was closed, Engracio and his companions did not obey nor
reply to the command. Thereupon, Agustin Castor arrived, and, also approaching
the door, asked his companions: ‘Why don’t you enter the house?’ to which they
replied: ‘We cannot push open the door, because they are holding it from the
inside.’ Then Agustin Castor replied: ‘If they don’t surrender, set fire to the
house.’ Thereupon, Isidoro Palomado and Juan Palma commenced to set fire to it.
Engracio and his companions, who were inside looking through the holes in its
walls, saw the herein defendants and recognized them by the light of the torches
and the first glares of the fire. While the front of the house was burning,
Agustin Castor divided his companions into groups, and ordered the members of
the first group to go and watch at the other side of the house and, if anyone
jumped out from it, to kill him. At this juncture, Engracio de la Cruz and his
companions called for help. Then the malefactors fled. Later, the entire house,
including the 55 cavanes of rice it contained, was reduced to ashes. Nothing
could be saved from the fire, except the lives of Engracio, his wife, and her
parents, and the baggage belonging to the first named. None of the offended
parties had had any trouble with the defendants prior to the occurrence of the
fire.”

From the facts above recited, it clearly appears that the defendants, armed
and carrying torches, went on the night in question to the house of Concepcion
Castellana—in which Engracio de la Cruz and his wife, the latter being a
daughter of Castellana, were temporarily residing—for the purpose of entering
it, by permission or by force, and accomplishing therein some design, which
might have been the satisfaction of a personal revenge because Engracio de la
Cruz had thrice refused to accommodate Agustin Castor, one of the defendants, in
the matter of the requests this latter had made to him a week before, or they
might have intended to commit a robbery, but they did not go there for the
purpose of setting the house on fire. According to the facts proven at the
trial, it was Agustin Castor who planned the burning of the house upon learning
from his companions that the inmates refused to open the door, and, endeavoring
to put his plan into execution, ordered the former to set the house on fire if
the people who were inside holding the door shut would not surrender. The
defendants, therefore, did not choose the nighttime for the burning of
Concepcion Castellana’s house, nor may it even be affirmed that they took
advantage of the nighttime to facilitate the commission of the crime or to
escape punishment, for it must be taken into account that when they approached
the house they were carrying four torches and must have known that the light
from these would enable their being recognized, as in fact they were, by the
inmates of the house.

The circumstance which aggravates criminal liability, and that consists in
the commission of the crime in the nighttime, shall be taken into consideration
according to the nature and incidents of the crime. (Penal Code, art. 10, No.
15.) In the case at bar the circumstance of nocturnity was purely
accidental, and cannot in any manner justify the imposition upon the
defendant-appellants of the penalty in its maximum degree. There being no
extenuating circumstance in their favor, they should, in my opinion, be
sentenced to the penalty in its medium degree, to wit, 16 years and one day of
cadena temporal.