PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, APPELLEE, VS. NORLITO SAMBAHON Y NUEVA, APPELLANT.

People versus Sambahon

The Case

This is the People of the Philippines against Norlito Sambahon y Nueva, a criminal prosecution for qualified rape. The accused was charged with having carnal knowledge of his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter through force and intimidation, with the qualifying circumstances of the victim's minority and the offender's relationship to her as stepfather. The case matters for the bar candidate because it gathers in one decision several recurring rules of criminal procedure and evidence: how a witness is impeached by prior inconsistent statements, how the testimony of a child victim in incestuous rape is weighed, why alibi fails when the accused was near the scene, and what the correct penalties and damages are after the abolition of the death penalty.

Procedural History

The Regional Trial Court of Calabanga, Camarines Sur, Branch 63, after trial, convicted the accused of qualified rape as charged. It sentenced him to death and ordered him to pay seventy-five thousand pesos as civil indemnity, fifty thousand pesos as moral damages, and twenty-five thousand pesos as exemplary damages, plus the accessory penalties under Article 40 of the Revised Penal Code.

The accused appealed to the Court of Appeals, faulting the trial court for giving full weight and credence to the private complainant's testimony and for finding him guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The Court of Appeals affirmed the factual findings but modified the penalty to reclusion perpetua, following the enactment of Republic Act Number 9346, and reduced the civil indemnity from seventy-five thousand pesos to fifty thousand pesos. The rest of the decision stood.

The case then reached the Supreme Court on the accused's present appeal. Both the accused and the Office of the Solicitor General filed manifestations stating that they no longer found it necessary to file supplemental briefs.

Facts

On the afternoon of August 12, 2003, the accused's wife and the victim's mother left their house in San Ramon, Tinambac, Camarines Sur, to tend their store, leaving the victim, who was then thirteen years old, with her three young siblings. The accused returned to the house in the early evening, supposedly to get merchandise. Past eight o'clock that night, he approached the victim as she slept in the room of her mother and the accused, told her not to make any noise, removed her skirt and panties, tied her hands, parted her legs, and inserted his penis into her vagina, making a push and pull movement that drew her to cry. Before returning to the store, he warned her not to tell her siblings or her mother, otherwise he would kill all of them.

About five months later, in the first week of January 2004, the accused brought the victim to the Bicol Medical Center in Naga City for a check-up, where she was found to be pregnant. She left home the following day and stayed with her maternal grandmother, to whom she revealed the sexual abuse, and later told her mother as well. The rape was then reported to the police. When a physician examined her on January 20, 2004, she complained that she had been raped by the accused on August 12, 2003. The doctor found old hymenal lacerations at the four, six, and nine o'clock positions, and a pregnancy of about twenty-seven to twenty-eight weeks by examination and thirty weeks by ultrasound.

During pre-trial, the accused admitted that the victim was thirteen years old on the day of the incident, having been born on December 15, 1989; that she was his stepdaughter, he having married her mother on June 5, 1996; and that on the day of the incident, he, the victim, and her mother were residing in the same house. In his defense, the accused interposed alibi, claiming that from five-thirty in the afternoon until ten o'clock that evening he was drinking with a companion and his brother-in-law at the latter's house, which stood just in front of his own. He could not, however, explain why the victim, whom he considered his own child, would charge him with rape.

Issues

• Whether or not the Court of Appeals erred in giving full weight and credence to the testimony of the private complainant.
• Whether or not the private complainant's alleged inconsistent statements, her failure to call for help, and her five-month silence destroy her credibility.
• Whether or not the accused's alibi deserves credence.
• Whether or not the penalty and the awards of damages were correctly imposed.

Applicable Provisions

Section 13, Rule 132 of the Rules of Court provides:

Section 13. How witness impeached by evidence of inconsistent statements. Before a witness can be impeached by evidence that he has made at other times statements inconsistent with his present testimony, the statements must be related to him, with the circumstances of the times and places and the persons present, and he must be asked whether he made such statements, and if so, allowed to explain them. If the statements be in writing they must be shown to the witness before any question is put to him concerning them.

This governs the accused's attack on the victim's credibility based on her statements during the preliminary examination, since the defense never laid the predicate the rule requires.

Section 3 of Republic Act Number 9346 provides:

Persons convicted of offenses punished with reclusion perpetua, or whose sentences will be reduced to reclusion perpetua, by reason of this Act, shall not be eligible for parole under Act Number 4103, otherwise known as the Indeterminate Sentence Law, as amended.

This is the basis for the Court's modification declaring the accused ineligible for parole.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that the victim's testimony bore the hallmarks of a credible witness. The accused himself conceded that he could not advance any reason why she would impute so serious a charge against him, and her mother testified that the victim and the accused had a good relationship. The Court stressed that a rape victim's testimony against her parent is entitled to great weight, because Filipino children revere and respect their elders, and no woman would undergo the shame of a public trial unless to condemn injustice and ensure that the offender is punished.

On the second issue, the Court held that the alleged inconsistency as to which room the rape occurred in could not be used to impeach the victim, because the defense never gave her the chance to explain or clarify it, as Section 13, Rule 132 requires. The Court quoted its earlier ruling that every witness is presumed truthful, that perjury is not readily inferred from apparent inconsistencies, and that every effort to reconcile conflicting points must first be exerted. In any event, the inconsistency did not touch the essential elements of the offense, and the victim's narration of how she was forced and intimidated remained consistent, direct, positive, and unwavering. Her failure to call her young siblings for help, and her five-month silence, were understandable: the moral and physical ascendancy of the accused, her stepfather living with them, sufficed to cow her into submission.

On the third issue, the Court held that alibi fails because it was not physically impossible for the accused to be at the scene of the crime, he having been merely in his brother-in-law's house fronting it.

On the fourth issue, the Court modified the challenged decision in two respects: the accused is not eligible for parole, and the civil indemnity of seventy-five thousand pesos awarded by the trial court, which the appellate court had reduced to fifty thousand pesos, should be reinstated, while his liability for moral and exemplary damages should be increased to seventy-five thousand pesos and thirty thousand pesos, respectively.

Doctrine

A witness may be impeached by prior inconsistent statements only after the predicate required by Section 13, Rule 132 of the Rules of Court is laid: the statements must be related to the witness with the circumstances of time, place, and persons present, and the witness must be asked whether he made them and, if so, allowed to explain. Absent that predicate, the supposed inconsistency cannot be used against the witness.

The testimony of a child victim in incestuous rape is entitled to great weight, and an inconsistency that does not impinge on the essential elements of the offense does not destroy credibility. Failure to call for help and delay in reporting are not fatal where the moral and physical ascendancy of the offender explains the victim's silence.

Alibi is unavailing where it was not physically impossible for the accused to be at the locus criminis at the time of its commission. Finally, under Section 3 of Republic Act Number 9346, a person convicted of an offense punished with reclusion perpetua, or whose sentence is reduced to reclusion perpetua by reason of that Act, is not eligible for parole.

Disposition

The Court affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals with modification: the accused was declared ineligible for parole and ordered to pay the victim seventy-five thousand pesos as civil indemnity, seventy-five thousand pesos as moral damages, and thirty thousand pesos as exemplary damages, with costs against him.

Remember This

Memorize the rule that no witness may be impeached by prior inconsistent statements unless the predicate under Section 13, Rule 132 is first laid, and that a conviction reduced to reclusion perpetua under Republic Act Number 9346 carries no eligibility for parole. Examiners use this case for the laying of the predicate in impeachment, the credibility of child victims in incestuous rape, and the correct damages in qualified rape.