FRANCISCO L. BAYLOSIS, SR., PETITIONER, VS. PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, RESPONDENT.

Baylosis versus People of the Philippines

The Case

This is the case of Baylosis versus People of the Philippines, a criminal case for estafa arising from the misappropriation of company collections by a warehouse supervisor of Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines, Incorporated. The petitioner, Francisco Baylosis, Sr., was convicted by the trial court and, while his appeal was pending before the Court of Appeals, sought a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence — an affidavit of the company's credit and collection manager showing that his remaining liability had been reduced to a much smaller amount — and asked that he be allowed to change his plea to guilty. The case matters because it is the clean statement of what does not qualify as newly discovered evidence: a fact that came into existence only after judgment cannot, by definition, have been discovered before it.

Procedural History

An Information for estafa was filed against Baylosis before the Regional Trial Court of Cebu City. At arraignment he entered a plea of not guilty. He was out on bail but did not appear during trial, so trial proceeded in absentia; having jumped bail and through counsel manifesting that the case be submitted for decision, he waived his right to present evidence. The trial court rendered judgment on January 10, 1992, finding him guilty beyond reasonable doubt of estafa under Article 315 of the Revised Penal Code and sentencing him, after applying the Indeterminate Sentence Law, to a prison term of seven years of prision mayor as minimum to seventeen years of reclusion temporal as maximum, and to indemnify Pepsi-Cola in the amount of 118,181.71 pesos, plus costs. His motion for reconsideration was denied, and he filed a notice of appeal.

Before the Court of Appeals, Baylosis filed a motion for new trial, attaching an affidavit of Zenaida Aya-ay, the credit and collection manager of Pepsi-Cola, stating that his remaining balance was only 21,981.71 pesos, and praying that the case be remanded to the trial court for new trial and that he be allowed to change his plea of not guilty to guilty. The Court of Appeals denied the motion for lack of merit in a Resolution dated December 5, 2001, and denied his motion for reconsideration in a Resolution dated February 8, 2002. He then came to the Supreme Court by petition for review on certiorari under Rule 45.

Facts

Baylosis was the warehouse supervisor of Pepsi-Cola Products Philippines, Incorporated in Carcar, Cebu. As such, he was in charge of collecting remittances from salesmen, depositing them in a bank or converting them into money orders or bank drafts on the following bank day, and immediately remitting them to the company's plant in Cebu City. His superior, the warehouse operations manager, monitored compliance with company rules and policies.

On March 5, 1990, at ten in the morning, Baylosis confessed that he had taken money from the company's accumulated collections starting from the last week of February 1990, resulting in a cash shortage of ninety thousand pesos, which he said he used to finance a special project for following up a land title. A cash count and physical inventory were then conducted in the presence of two witnesses, and the shortage turned out to be 118,181.71 pesos, covering both cash sales collections and physical inventory. Baylosis acknowledged and signed the cash count and inventory sheets, even adding a notation that the money was used for special projects for following up a land title. A demand was made on him to produce the deficient amount, but he failed to return it. He was preventively suspended, an administrative investigation was conducted, and he was eventually dismissed from service.

At trial, the prosecution presented the warehouse operations manager and the route manager for the Carcar area, whose testimony corroborated the admission and the signed sheets. Baylosis, having jumped bail, presented no evidence. After his conviction, he made payments on his liability in 1998, years after the January 10, 1992 judgment, and it was these payments that the credit and collection manager's affidavit reflected.

Issues

• Whether or not the Court of Appeals acted with grave abuse of discretion in denying the motion for new trial, when the affidavit of the credit and collection manager showed that the amount misappropriated had been reduced and the petitioner sought to change his plea to guilty.
• Whether or not the payments made after judgment constitute newly discovered evidence that would warrant a new trial.
• Whether or not the doctrine in Jose versus Court of Appeals, that a new trial tempers the severity of a judgment, applies to justify a new trial for purposes of plea bargaining at this stage.

Applicable Provisions

Article 315 of the Revised Penal Code, under which the petitioner was charged and convicted, provides in its relevant portion:

Swindling (estafa). Any person who shall defraud another by any of the means mentioned hereinbelow shall be punished by: 1. The penalty of prision correccional in its maximum period to prision mayor in its minimum period, if the amount of the fraud is over 12,000 pesos but does not exceed 22,000 pesos; and if such amount exceeds the latter sum, the penalty provided in this paragraph shall be imposed in its maximum period, adding one year for each additional 10,000 pesos; but the total penalty which may be imposed shall not exceed twenty years.

This is the crime for which the petitioner was convicted, and it frames the judgment he sought to overturn through a new trial.

Section 11, Rule 124 of the Rules of Court, which the petitioner invoked, provides:

Power of appellate court on appeal. Upon appeal from a judgment of the Court of First Instance, the appellate court may reverse, affirm, or modify the judgment and increase or reduce the penalty imposed by the trial court, remand the case to the Court of First Instance for new trial or retrial, or dismiss the case.

This is the source of the appellate court's power to remand for new trial, which the petitioner asked the Court of Appeals to exercise.

Section 14, Rule 124 of the 2000 Rules of Criminal Procedure, under which the motion for new trial was filed, provides:

Motion for new trial. At any time after the appeal from the judgment of the Regional Trial Court has been perfected and before the judgment of the Court of Appeals convicting or acquitting the accused becomes final, the appellate court may, on motion of the accused, grant a new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence.

This is the procedural ground on which the petitioner's motion rested, and the Court measures the affidavit against the requirement of newly discovered evidence.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the Court of Appeals did not gravely abuse its discretion. For newly discovered evidence to be appreciated as a ground for a motion for new trial, four requisites must be shown: first, the evidence was discovered after trial; second, it could not have been discovered and produced at the trial even with reasonable diligence; third, it is material, not merely cumulative, corroborative, or impeaching; and fourth, it is of such weight that it would probably change the judgment if admitted. The affidavit of the credit and collection manager failed the first and second requisites, because the payments it referred to were made in 1998, after the January 10, 1992 judgment. As the Court of Appeals observed, the payments could not have been produced during trial since they were made after judgment, and so could hardly be classified as newly discovered evidence.

On the second issue, the Court stressed that the evidence presented must be in actual existence and unknown to the party even if judgment had already been rendered. Otherwise, how could it be discovered evidence when it did not in fact exist previously during trial? The Court defined discovery as the act, process, or instance of gaining knowledge of or ascertaining the existence of something previously unknown or unrecognized. Newly discovered evidence is material evidence that would mean the success or defeat of a party's cause, of which the party was unaware during trial, and the remedy gives that party a second opportunity to prove the claim. The payments made after judgment were not such evidence.

On the third issue, the Court distinguished Jose versus Court of Appeals. In that case, the accused was convicted of illegal possession of explosives, and the documents he sought to introduce — a written permit to possess a hand grenade and his appointment as a Philippine Constabulary agent — existed during trial but were withheld to protect his identity as an undercover agent, and were only revealed when the authorities realized it was unjust for him to go to jail for a crime he had not committed. Those circumstances were exceptional enough to warrant a new trial to afford him an opportunity to establish his innocence. By contrast, the petitioner's circumstance was his payment of the misappropriated amount years after conviction, which was not extraordinary enough to warrant the grant of the motion. The Court added that plea bargaining as a ground comes too late at this stage.

Doctrine

A motion for new trial on the ground of newly discovered evidence under Section 14, Rule 124 of the Rules of Court requires that the evidence was discovered after trial; that it could not have been discovered and produced at the trial even with reasonable diligence; that it is material and not merely cumulative, corroborative, or impeaching; and that it is of such weight that it would probably change the judgment if admitted. Evidence of facts that came into existence only after judgment cannot be newly discovered evidence, because it did not exist during trial and could not have been discovered then. The doctrine in Jose versus Court of Appeals, that a new trial tempers the severity of a judgment, applies only to exceptional circumstances, such as evidence that existed during trial but was withheld for a compelling reason, and not to the mere payment of the amount misappropriated after conviction. Plea bargaining raised for the first time on appeal comes too late.

Disposition

The Supreme Court denied the petition for lack of merit and affirmed the December 5, 2001 and February 8, 2002 Resolutions of the Court of Appeals. The petitioner lost; his conviction for estafa stood.

Remember This

The single line to memorize: newly discovered evidence must have existed during trial but remained unknown despite reasonable diligence; a fact born after judgment is not newly discovered evidence. Examiners use this case to test the four requisites of newly discovered evidence under Section 14, Rule 124, and to distinguish it from the exceptional-circumstances doctrine in Jose versus Court of Appeals.