THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. MARCIANO MEDINA Y DIOKNO (ALIAS MARIANO MEDINA, ALIAS ALEJANDRO DOLA), DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

This is an appeal from a decision of Judge Anacleto Diaz in the Court
of First Instance of Manila, finding the defendant guilty of robbery in
an inhabited house and of being a habitual delinquent, and sentencing
him to suffer a principal penalty of ten years and one day of prision mayor and an additional penalty of ten years of prision mayor because of being four times a recidivist, to indemnify James C. Rockwell in the sum of P320, and to pay the costs.

Appellant’s attorney makes the following assignments of error:

“1.
The trial court erred in finding and concluding that the finger prints
which were found impressed on the small silver box of the complainant
James C. Rockwell were identical to the finger prints of the accused.

“2.
The trial court erred in finding and concluding that it was the
accused-appellant who took away the said small silver box from the room
of Mrs. Rockwell and the valuables worth P320 belonging to James C.
Rockwell.

“3. The trial court erred in finding and
concluding that the accused-appellant is guilty of the crime of robbery
as defined in article 299, No. 3 of the Revised Penal Code for which
the trial court sentenced the accused to imprisonment of ten years and
one day plus an additional imprisonment of ten years of prision mayor as recidivist and to indemnify the said James C. Rockwell in the amount of P320 and to pay the costs of the action.”

The defendant was tried on a plea of not guilty to the following information:

“The undersigned accuses Marciano Medina y Diokno alias Mariano Medina alias Alejandro Dola of the crime of robbery in an inhabited house, committed as follows:

“That
on or about the 12th day of February, 1932, during the nighttime which
was purposely sought, in the municipality of Pasay, Province of Rizal,
Philippine Islands, within two and one-half miles from the limits of
the City of Manila, Philippine Islands and within the jurisdiction of
this court, the said Marciano Medina y Diokno alias Mariano Medina alias
Alejandro Dola did then and there willfully, unlawfully, and
feloniously, and with intent of gain, break into and enter through the
window by tearing the wire screen thereof, an opening not intended for
entrance or egress, of house No. 1155 F. B. Harrison Street, in said
municipality of Pasay, the dwelling house of James C. Rockwell, and,
once inside said premises, take, steal, and carry away without the
consent of the owner thereof the following personal property, to wit:

One (1) watch ‘Howard’, gold, with an outside monogram containing the initials “JCR” valued at ………………………………………………….		P200.00
One (1) ‘Green’ wrist watch with a leather strap, valued at …………		120.00
		_______
	Total …………………………………………………..	320.00

belonging to James C. Rockwell, to the damage and prejudice of the said
owner thereof in the afore-mentioned sum of P320, Philippine currency.

“That, at the time of the commission of this offense, the said accused Marciano Medina y Diokno alias Mariano Medina alias
Alejandro Dola has already been convicted three (3) times of the crime
of theft by virtue of final judgments rendered by competent courts and
is, therefore, a habitual delinquent, his last date of conviction being
on October 23, 1924 and his date of release being on October 26, 1927.”

At the trial the defendant admitted that Mr. Rockwell’s house was
robbed on the night of February 12, 1932, as alleged in the
information, but denied that he was the author of the crime; admitted
that a silver box, which had been taken from the room of Mrs. Rockwell
on the night of the robbery, was found in the garden the next morning,
and that when it was examined in the Intelligence Division of the
Constabulary it showed a finger print on the top. The defendant further
admitted the competency of the witness, Agripino Ruiz, as a finger
print expert; and lastly the defendant admitted that he had been
convicted three times of theft, his last conviction being on October
23, 1924 and his release on October 26, 1927.

It appears
from the evidence that while Agripino Ruiz, a Constabulary agent and
finger print expert, was investigating the robbery in question he went
to see the accused, who was under arrest for breaking into the house of
Capt. Davidson in Parañaque. Ruiz took the finger prints of the
accused, and found when he compared them with his records that the
accused had served three terms in Bilibid prison for theft. Ruiz then
compared a photograph of the impression of the middle finger of
defendant’s right hand with a photograph of the finger print on the top
of the silver box stolen from the bedroom of Mrs. Rockwell, and found
that they coincided in ten points. He concluded that the two
impressions were from the same person, and that the finger print on the
box was that of the defendant.

The defense of the accused
was an alibi. He asserted that on the night of the robbery in question
he was at home with a sore foot. This contention of the defendant rests
on his uncorroborated testimony.

It is now well settled that
evidence as to the correspondence of finger prints is admissible for
the purpose of proving identity (Moon vs. State, Arizona
Supreme Court, June 7, 1921, 198 Pac., 288; 16 A. L. R., 362, and the
authorities there cited). The history of the finger print system of
identification is stated in one of the leading cases, People vs. Sallow (165 N. Y. Supp., 915, 918), as follows:

“Scientific
authority declares that finger prints are reliable as a means of
identification. (10 Ency. Brit. [11th ed.], 376.) The first recorded
finger prints were used as a manual seal, to give a personal mark of
authenticity to documents. Such prints are found in the Assyrian clay
tablets in the British Museum. Finger prints were first used to record
the identity of individuals officially by Sir William Herschel, in
Bengal, to check forgeries by natives in India in 1858. (C. Ainsworth
Mitchell, in ‘Science and the Criminal,’ 1911, p. 51.) Finger print
records have been constantly used as a basis of information for the
courts since Sir Francis Galton proved that the papillary ridges which
cover the inner surface of the hands and the soles of the feet form
patterns, the main details of which remain the same from the sixth
month of the embryonic period until decomposition sets in after death,
and Sir Edward Henry, the head of the Metropolitan Police Force of
London, formulated a practical system of classification, subsequently
simplified by an Argentine named Vucetich. The system has been in
general use in the criminal courts in England since 1891. It is claimed
that by means of finger prints the metropolitan police force of London
during the 13 years from 1901 to 1914 have made over 103,000
identifications, and the Magistrates’ Court of New York City during the
4 years from 1911 to 1915 have made 31,000 identifications, without
error. (Report of Alfred H. Hart, Supervisor, Fingerprint Bureau, Ann.
Rep., N. Y. City Magistrates’ Courts, 1915.) Their value has been
recognized by banks and other corporations, passport bureaus of foreign
governments, and civil service commissions as a certain protection
against impersonation.

“It was held in 1909 by the Lord
Chief Justice of England that the court may accept the evidence of
finger prints, though it he the sole ground of identification.
(Castleton’s Case, 3 Crim. App. C, 74.)”

In
the case at bar the principal contentions of appellant’s attorney are
that the identification was incomplete and unreliable because the
imprint of only one finger was found on the box, and that was blurred,
and could not serve as a basis of comparison. There is little merit in
this argument. Although a portion of the impression on the box was
somewhat blurred, it did not seriously interfere with the comparison of
the two finger prints. It would of course have been more satisfactory
for the purpose of comparison if there had been an impression of all
the fingers of the thief on the box, but we are not justified in
rejecting the evidence of record merely because it might be more
complete.

Referring to the care necessary in photographing
accidental imprints, Wentworth and Wilder in their work, “Personal
Identification” (1932), say that these imprints at best will be poor;
that one will never find an accidental imprint that is absolutely
perfect; that it is seldom, indeed, that a very good one is found (p.
260).

The only important question is whether or not the
evidence identifies the accused beyond a reasonable doubt as the person
whose finger print appears on the box, because the box was taken from
the bedroom of Mrs. Rockwell on the night of the robbery, and the
finger print thereon, if that of the accused, could have been made only
on the occasion when the robbery was committed.

It might be
here stated that the finger prints of the persons living in Mr.
Rockwell’s house were taken, but that they did not correspond to the
impression in question.

A photograph showing an enlargement
of the finger print found on the box was marked at the trial Exhibit A.
Further enlargements of it are shown in Exhibits A-1 and A-2. Exhibit B
is an enlargement of a photograph of the impression of the middle
finger of defendant’s right hand, taken while he was a prisoner in
Bilibid.

When asked which were the ten points of agreement
between the two impressions in question, the finger print expert
replied that there were three classes of characteristics, namely: the
endings of the ridges, the bifurcation of the ridges, and the core. The
ten points of identity, which were marked on the photographs, are as
follows:

1. Upward end of a ridge,
2. Core,
3. Both ends of a short ridge,
4. Both ends of a short ridge,
5. Downward end of a ridge,
6. Upward end of a ridge,
7. Bifurcation,
8. Upward end of a ridge,
9. Upward end of a ridge,
10. Bifurcation.

The witness stated that in his opinion eight characteristics are
sufficient to identify a person. According to Frederick Kuhn of the
Bureau of Criminal Identification, Police Department of the City of New
York, in the “Finger Print Instructor”, p. 12, “characteristics” are
the peculiarities of the ridges, such as abrupt endings, bifurcations,
the formation of what is termed an island, short ridge lines, ridge
dots, some peculiarity as to the formation of the delta or core; in
fact any peculiarity out of the ordinary may be considered a
characteristic point, and serve as a positive means of identification.

The Galton details, the ends, forks, islands and so on, are so numerous
and so variable that even in a small area a duplication is impossible;
so far as we know all the infinite possibilities in the formation of
the ridges are widely open in each individual case, so that it is quite
safe to say that no two people in the world can have, even over a small
area, the same set of details, similarly related to the individual
units; the only possible confusion might result from an area so small
and so featureless as to show nothing but complete and parallel ridges,
and without details, and could never occur in connection with the
formation of a pattern, where the ridges are called upon to make
eccentric turns, and to fill up spaces of irregular shape (Wentworth
& Wilder, p. 126).

Explaining the ten points of
identity, the expert witness in the case at bar testified that he found
four endings of ascending ridges in Exhibit B that corresponded exactly
to those of Exhibit A; that as to the number and location with respect
to the core, which he marked 2 in both photographs, he found that they
agreed; that he found in Exhibit B two bifurcations or forks that
corresponded exactly to those in Exhibit A as to number and location;
that he found in Exhibit B a short ridge, the two ends of which he
marked 3 and 4, that was identical with the corresponding short ridge
in Exhibit A, which he also marked 3 and 4.

The attorney for
the appellant calls attention to the fact that there was the impression
of another finger on the box that was not identified. That is true, but
as it was the impression of only a small part of the ball of a finger
and was blurred, the expert did not make any particular study of it. It
may have been made by the person who picked up the box in the garden.
In any event it does not alter the fact that a finger print identical
with that of the defendant in ten homologous points of comparison was
found on the box.

Although there is some difference of
opinion among the authorities as to what constitutes proof of identity,
the older writers regarding twelve points as necessary to prove certain
identity, and more than that for absolute identification, the more
recent writers think that six or eight homologous points of comparison
leave no room for reasonable doubt. “In the end it is the microscopic
identity of the ridge characteristics (Galton’s minutiae) that settles
the question.” (Personal Identification, p. 263.)

In the
present case the qualifications of the expert witness were admitted. He
stated under oath that in his opinion the finger print in question is
that of the defendant, and gave the reasons for his conclusion, which
seem to us to be reasonable and to be sustained by the best authorities
available. No reason has been adduced that would justify us in
rejecting his findings and conclusion. We wish to add, however, that
the prosecuting attorney ought to have addressed further questions to
the expert witness to show how he arrived at his findings, that is, his
method of examination and comparison, his measurements, and other
pertinent facts. Another competent and experienced specialist might
well have been called to verify the findings of the Constabulary expert.

The only evidence for the defendant was his uncorroborated testimony
that on the night in question he was at home in San Luis, Batangas. In
weighing the testimony of the defendant it is proper to take into
account the fact that he has already been convicted three times of
theft.

Robbery in an inhabited house is punished by prision mayor in its medium period to reclusion temporal in
its minimum period, if the value of the property taken exceeds P250, if
the malefactor entered the house by breaking a window, as in the
present case, but when the offender does not carry arms, as in this
case, the penalty next lower in degree shall be imposed (article 299 of
the Revised Penal Code). The penalty next lower in degree is prision correccional in its medium period to prision mayor in its minimum period, or from two years, four months, and one day of prision correccional to eight years of prision mayor.
In the present case in fixing the principal penalty, we must take into
account the aggravating circumstances of recidivism and nocturnity. The
principal penalty imposed on the accused is therefore reduced to six
years and one day of prision mayor.

The additional
penalty of ten years imposed by the lower court is the maximum of the
maximum for a fourth conviction. We think that under the circumstances
of this case the minimum authorized by law would be sufficient, and the
additional penalty of the appellant is accordingly reduced to six years
and one day.

Modified as hereinabove stated, the decision appealed from is affirmed, with the costs against the appellant.

Avanceña, C. J., Street, Abad Santos, and Butte, JJ., concur.