THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. VICTORIO GULES (ALIAS VICTOR), DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

The accused was charged with the crime of murder in the Court of First
Instance of Leyte, the information reading as follows:

“Que en o hacia el 23 de febrero de 1931, en el Municipio de Cabalian,
Provincia de Leyte, Islas Filipinas, y dentro dela jurisdiccion de este Juzgado,
el referido acusado, con un bolo de que estaba provisto, voluntaria, ilegal y
criminalmente, y con premeditacion conocida, agredio alevosamente al Dr. Jose
Hipe en la espalda fuera de la columna vertebral al lado izquierdo, que le causo
la muerte despues de dieciocho dias.”

After due trial the court below found the defendant guilty of the crime
charged, with the mitigating circumstance of obfuscation, and sentenced him to
seventeen years and one day of cadena temporal with the accessory
penalties, to indemnify the family of the deceased in the amount of P1,000, and
to pay the costs. Thereupon the defendant appealed to this court.

The evidence establishes that on February 22, 1931, the defendant, Victorio
Gules, asked Dr. Jose Hipe to cure him and his three children. In reply to the
request, Dr. Hipe went to the defendant’s residence and began treating him and
his children. On the afternoon of that day one of the children died, and the
defendant lost faith in Dr. Hipe. The defendant thereupon had himself and his
children treated by a quack doctor. Hipe resented this, although he was
prevailed upon by the defendant’s wife to come and continue treating her
children.

On the afternoon of the next day, Dr. Hipe went to the defendant’s residence
to continue his treatment, but the defendant told him not to give the same
medicine as that he had already given to the child who had died. This annoyed
Dr. Hipe, and he refused to continue curing the defendant’s children, and at the
same time he demanded the payment of the medicines that he had administered to
them. The defendant remonstrated, saying that he had no money at that time. He
thereupon went to the kitchen to get drinking water for the sick children, and
he there saw a bolo, which he took, and then returned to Dr. Hipe, insisting
that the latter should treat the children. The doctor persisted in his refusal,
and as he was going down stairs, the defendant stabbed him in the back with the
bolo and thereby inflicted the wound which caused Dr. Hipe’s death nineteen days
later.

The facts as stated above are established not only by the testimony of
Narcisa Saludo and Eliseo Saludo, widow and father-in-law respectively of the
deceased, but also by the testimony of the defendant himself. He admitted that
he had wounded Dr. Hipe, but alleged that he could not tell how he did it,
because he was then obfuscated.

There can be no question of the defendant’s guilt. The crime committed is
murder, which is punished under the new Penal Code with reclusion
temporal. As indicated above, there is one mitigating circumstance, namely
obfuscation, in favor of the defendant, and without any aggravating circumstance
against him.

The court below sentenced the defendant to seventeen years and one day of
cadena temporal. As that penalty is not entirely correct, it must be
modified by imposing upon the accused a penalty of seventeen years, four months,
and one day of reclusion temporal. In all other respects the judgment of the
court below is correct. With costs against the appellant. So ordered.

Avanceña, C. J., Johnson, Street, Malcolm, Villamor, Romualdez, and
Imperial, JJ., concur.

Villa-Real, J., concurs in the result.