PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. ELMER DAMITAN Y MANTAWEL, DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

People versus Damitan

The Case

This is a criminal appeal in which the People of the Philippines prosecuted Elmer Damitan y Mantawel for the killing of Leon Cahapon, Senior. The accused admitted that he stabbed the victim, but he pleaded self-defense, the justifying circumstance under the first paragraph of Article 11 of the Revised Penal Code. The case matters because it gathers in one decision the three lessons a bar candidate must carry into the examination room: the burden of evidence shifts to the accused once he admits the killing, the nature and number of wounds are the surest indicia against self-defense, and an indivisible penalty is applied regardless of any mitigating circumstance.

Procedural History

The accused was charged with murder by an Information filed on the fifteenth of June 1998 before the Regional Trial Court of Malaybalay, Branch 8. Upon arraignment, assisted by counsel, he pleaded not guilty, and trial followed. On the fourteenth of September 1999, the trial court rendered judgment finding him guilty beyond reasonable doubt of murder and sentencing him to reclusion perpetua, with an order to indemnify the heirs of the victim in the amount of 50,000 pesos. From that judgment the accused appealed directly to the Supreme Court, assigning three errors: that the trial court disregarded his defense, that it erred in finding him guilty of murder beyond reasonable doubt, and that it failed to appreciate the mitigating circumstance of voluntary surrender.

Facts

On the twenty-seventh of April 1998, at around five o'clock in the morning, the victim Leon Cahapon, a purok leader, was at the barrio hall in Butong, Quezon, Bukidnon, with Conrado Sumin-ao, a datu chieftain of the Manobo tribe. They had agreed the day before to meet there to transfer a basketball court. The victim's thirteen-year-old grandson, Junine, arrived on a horse and asked his grandfather to fix the rope of the horse.

While the victim was facing the horse and fixing the rope, the accused arrived and, without uttering a word, suddenly stabbed him twice with a hunting knife about ten inches long. The first strike came from behind and hit the right breast; the second hit the lower portion of the first wound and was inflicted while the victim was already lying down. Sumin-ao, who was about one meter away, and Junine, who was about one and a half meters away, both identified the accused. The accused then surrendered himself at the military detachment at BUSCO.

The accused testified that two days earlier the victim's wife had shooed away his chickens, and that the day before the killing he saw the victim catch one of them. He claimed that on the morning of the killing the victim challenged him in a harsh tone to come down from his house, boxed him twice, and tried to stab him, and that he wrested the knife and stabbed the victim twice without realizing it. The trial court rejected this account and found him guilty of murder.

Issues

• Whether or not the trial court erred in disregarding the accused's plea of self-defense.
• Whether or not the trial court erred in finding the accused guilty beyond reasonable doubt of murder rather than homicide, that is, whether or not treachery attended the killing.
• Whether or not the trial court erred in not appreciating the mitigating circumstance of voluntary surrender.

Applicable Provisions

The first paragraph of Article 11 of the Revised Penal Code provides:

Justifying circumstances. The following do not incur any criminal liability: 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.

This is the provision the accused invoked, and its first element, unlawful aggression, is the one the Court found wanting.

Paragraph sixteen of Article 14 of the Revised Penal Code, on treachery, is the provision the Court applied to qualify the killing from homicide to murder.

Article 63 of the Revised Penal Code provides:

Rules for the application of indivisible penalties. In all cases in which the law prescribes a single indivisible penalty, it shall be applied by the courts regardless of any mitigating or aggravating circumstances that may have attended the commission of the deed.

This provision is why the mitigating circumstance of voluntary surrender, though present, could not reduce the penalty of reclusion perpetua.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court upheld the rejection of self-defense. When the accused admits killing a person but pleads self-defense, the burden of evidence shifts to him to prove by clear and convincing evidence the elements of his defense. His version was uncorroborated, and his bare and self-serving assertions could not prevail over the positive identification by the two principal prosecution witnesses, who had no improper motive to testify. The Court stressed that the accused must rely on the strength of his own evidence and not on the weakness of the prosecution's, for even if the latter were weak, it could not be disbelieved after he had admitted the killing. There was no unlawful aggression: the victim was facing the horse and fixing its rope when he was attacked, so there was no real, imminent and actual threat to the accused's life. The claim of a scuffle was belied by the absence of any bruise or contusion on either man, and the two fatal stab wounds on the breast, the second inflicted while the victim lay defenseless, negated self-defense.

On the second issue, the Court held that treachery attended the killing. The attack was sudden and unexpected, delivered from behind while the victim was unaware, and the second stab was given while he was already lying down, a means employed to insure impunity. The Court quoted the testimony of Sumin-ao, who explained that although the wounds were on the breast, the strike of the accused came from behind toward the front of the victim. Treachery qualified the killing to murder, and under Article 248 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended, the penalty is reclusion perpetua to death.

On the third issue, the Court agreed that voluntary surrender was present, since the accused immediately surrendered and the prosecution did not dispute it. But because reclusion perpetua is an indivisible penalty, it is applied regardless of any mitigating circumstance under Article 63. The Court also corrected the damages: the 50,000 pesos civil indemnity was proper by proof alone of the fact of death, actual damages were correctly denied for lack of proof, and moral damages of 50,000 pesos were added because the victim's heir suffered grief.

Doctrine

• When the accused admits the killing but pleads self-defense, the burden of evidence shifts to him to prove by clear and convincing evidence all the elements of Article 11: unlawful aggression, reasonable necessity of the means employed, and lack of sufficient provocation on his part.
• Unlawful aggression means a real, imminent and actual threat to life, not an imaginary one; its absence negates self-defense entirely.
• The nature, location and number of wounds inflicted are important indicia to disprove self-defense; a second stab delivered while the victim lies defenseless is incompatible with a plea of self-defense.
• Treachery is present when the offender positions himself behind the victim and suddenly stabs him without warning, employing means that tend directly and specially to insure the execution of the crime without risk to himself.
• An indivisible penalty is applied regardless of any mitigating or aggravating circumstance under Article 63, so voluntary surrender cannot lower reclusion perpetua.

Disposition

The appeal was dismissed and the judgment of conviction for murder was affirmed, with the modification that the accused was further ordered to pay the heirs of Leon Cahapon, Senior, 50,000 pesos as moral damages.

Remember This

Memorize the line that once the accused admits the killing, he must stand on the strength of his own evidence and not on the weakness of the prosecution's. Examiners use this case for the shifting of the burden in self-defense, for the wound-pattern test that negates self-defense, and for the rule that an indivisible penalty ignores mitigating circumstances.