G. R. No. 44564. March 30, 1937
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. DELFIN BAYOT ET AL., DEFENDANTS. DELFIN BAYOT, APPELLANT.
DIAZ, J,:
house of Emilio Luit and Beatriz Montoya, who were then living as
husband and wife in the sitio called Mulawin, barrio of Buenavista,
municipality of General Trias, Province of Cavite, to ask the latter,
after waking them up, to show them the house of one surnamed Bermudez.
After Emilio Luit had told them to go eastward, one of the five men
requested him to be kind enough to accompany them; but Emilio Luit
excused himself saying that he could not leave his wife alone. They
then asked him for water to drink and Emilio Luit went down the house
to comply with their request. After drinking-, the five men, instead of
going away, remained near the house to talk among themselves, some
stating that they should proceed eastward, the others insisting that,
on the contrary, they should rest because they were tired, having come
from Indang. After a while, they again requested Emilio Luit to please
come down because they desired to ask him another question. They asked
him whether one Tano, who, according to them, was president of the Sakdal
party, lived in his house, making him understand at the same time that
they were soldiers from Indang. When Luit answered that said person
referred to by them neither lived nor went there, they then requested
him to give them lodging in his house for the night. Although Luit had
only one mat, he decided to welcome them; and when he was about to open
the door of his house for them, one of the five men fired at him
thereby causing a wound which pierced his body from the epigastric
region to the opposite side. After Luit had already been wounded, three
of the above-mentioned five men went up his house to demand money. As
they were not able to obtain any amount, because Luit and Beatriz
Montoya were penniless, they carried away a lamp valued at P1.50, a pig
under the stairs valued at P9, and a bolo the value of which the
prosecuting attorney could not determine due either to poor memory or
neglect. Luit was taken to the Philippine General Hospital in the City
of Manila, where he died two and a half hours later.
Inasmuch as Beatriz Montoya, the day after the crime, pointed to
Delfin Bayot and Lazaro Dinglasan as two of the five men who had
attacked them, the complaint which gave rise to the case was filed in
the justice of the peace court of General Trias against them and
Ponciano Amparo, John Doe and Richard Doe, the latter two being the
supposed names of the unknown persons who had also participated in the
crime. The lower court, to which the case was forwarded later, tried
the case only against Delfin Bayot because the accused Lazaro Dinglasan
had not been arrested earlier; Ponciano Amparo had not theretofore been
located; and the other two had not been identified. The lower court,
after hearing and receiving all the evidence presented by both the
prosecution and the defense, rendered judgment finding Delfin Bayot
guilty of the crime of frustrated robbery with the aggravating
circumstances of nighttime, band and dwelling, and sentencing him to
suffer an indeterminate penalty of from 6 months of arresto mayor to 4 years and 2 months of prision correctional with the corresponding accessory penalties, with costs.
Delfin Bayot appealed from the judgment and now assigns the
following four alleged errors as committed by the lower court, to wit:
(1) In overruling his demurrer to the complaint; (2) in giving credit
and much weight to Beatriz Montoya’s testimony which, according to him,
is improbable and contradictory; (3) in disregarding the testimony of
the witnesses for the defense; and (4) in finding him guilty of
frustrated robbery with the aggravating circumstances of nighttime,
band and dwelling.
The first alleged error attributed to the lower court is based on
the ground that the information charges the appellant with crimes to
wit: (1) That of robbery in an inhabited house, and (2) that of robbery
in band and in an uninhabited place. However, by reading the
information, it is noted that there is no allegation therein of such
robberies with the qualifying circumstances of dwelling or inhabited
house in the first case, and of band and uninhabited place In the
second case. What is very clearly stated in the information is that the
crime with which the appellant is charged is the complex one of robbery
with homicide, as defined and punished in article 294, subsection 1 of
the Revised Penal Code, and committed, as stated therein, with the
aggravating circumstances of band and in the dwelling of one Emilio
Luit situated in an uninhabited place. The circumstance of dwelling in
an uninhabited place, which is impossible because in order that an
uninhabited place may be taken into consideration as an aggravating
circumstance, it must be selected and intentionally sought, and the
circumstance of band, are not qualifying circumstances. They are not
even inherent in the crime with which the appellant is charged but
merely generic circumstances of said crime. In crimes of robbery, a
qualifying or inherent aggravating circumstance should not be mistaken
for a merely generic aggravating circumstance. The effect of a generic
aggravating circumstance not offset by any mitigating circumstance, is
to increase the penalty which should be imposed upon the accused, but
without exceeding the limit prescribed by law; while that of a
qualifying or inherent aggravating circumstance is not only to give the
crime committed its proper and exclusive name but also to place the
author thereof in such a situation as to deserve no other penalty than
that especially prescribed for said crime.
The place of the commission of crimes of robbery, defined and
punished in article 294 of the Revised Penal Code, is not of such
importance as to preclude, if not proven, the imposition of the
penalties prescribed therein. If homicide is committed on the occasion
of a robbery, the penalty which should unavoidably be imposed upon the
accused is reclusion perpetua to death, and no other. The
circumstance of place and those of time and manner of commission would
only serve to determine whether the penalty of reclusion perpetua
or death Should be imposed upon the person guilty of said complex
crime. In view of the foregoing, this court holds that the first
assignment of alleged error attributed to the lower court is unfounded.
As to the other assignments of error, it is clear, after a careful
examination of the record, that the facts occurred as above-stated,
taking into consideration the testimony of Beatriz Montoya and the
other witnesses for the prosecution. Said Beatriz Montoya testified
that while it is true that she did not know the appellant by name at
the time of the commission of the crime, she nevertheless already knew
him by face some days prior thereto, having seen him pass several times
by the place where she and the deceased lived, and that it was the
appellant who had fired the shot wounding Emilio Luit and causing his
death sometime later. It was attempted to impugn her testimony by the
argument that she could not have recognized those who had attacked
them, citing for said purpose, the statements alleged to have been made
by her before the justice of the peace of the municipality of General
Trias and before the barrio lieutenant Rufino Buclatin, at dawn and in
the morning of May 11, 1935. The two officials in question testified
that formerly Beatriz Montoya had stated to said justice of the peace
that her husband’s aggressor was one Bayot, without mentioning his
name; and to the barrio lieutenant, that she did not know the names of
those who had attacked them, but would be able to recognize them if she
were to see them again. The truth is that at 6 o’clock in the morning
of the day after the crime, the appellant was arrested by Lieutenant
Rueda of the Constabulary because after questioning Beatriz Montoya and
obtaining the description of Emilio Luit’s aggressor, he forthwith went
in search of Bayot, found him on his land and brought him later to the
municipal building of General Trias. Upon his arrival there, and after
having been seen by said woman in a line up with several men, the
appellant was identified by her as the aggressor. The description of
this man given to Lieutenant Rueda was that he was surnamed Bayot, son
. of Isidoro, a little bit pockmarked, and with a coca-cola haircut,
which description, according to the testimony of said officer during
the trial, tallied with the appellant’s. The appellant’s arrest shortly
after the commission of the crime; the fact that the aggressor’s
description tallied with his; and the fact that Beatriz Montoya pointed
to him as Luit’s true aggressor, prove that she did not make the
statements attributed to her by Rufino Buclatin, the barrio lieutenant,
Florentino Santos, the justice of the peace, and Angel Genuino, the
municipal president. They prove furthermore, that she really recognized
the appellant at the time of the commission of the crime, She could not
have been mistaken in affirming that it was the appellant who had
caused Emilio Luit’s death, because according to said witness, she saw
him fire the shot; she also saw him carrying a revolver in his hand
when he went up her house immediately after firing the shot; and
furthermore she heard him demand money when he was already inside the
house. It is not strange that she could then identify him because there
was light, and moreover, she already knew him by face several days
before the incident. On the other hand, the deceased himself, before
his death, stated that his aggressor was Bayot, son of Isidoro, a
habitue of cockpits, and approximately of his age. The appellant was
then 22 years of age and the deceased was 29, a difference which may
well be considered insignificant because one’s age cannot always be
determined with certainty just by his general appearance.
The testimony of Beatriz Montoya, Lieutenant Rueda and the deceased
himself when he was at the point of death, together with the fact that
the former two did not have the least motive to distort the truth for
the purpose of prejudicing the appellant, totally impeach the testimony
of the above-mentioned witnesses for the defense: justice of the peace
Florentino Santos, barrio lieutenant Rufino Buclatin and municipal
president Angel Genuino. Angel Genuino testified that before Beatriz
Montoya subscribed before him her statement, Exhibit 1, to the effect
that the person who had, fired the shot was a man with a more or less
fair complexion, pockmarked, and taller than the deceased, she told him
that she had not been able to recognize any of those who had attacked
the house. He stated, however, that immediately after she had made such
statements to him, Lieutenant Rueda arrived and in turn questioned her.
According to said lieutenant, it was on this occasion that Beatriz
Montoya gave him the description serving as data and guiding him in
arresting the appellant, thereby inferring that said municipal
president’s testimony is untrue. The contention that the appellant’s
father, with whom he lived, is well-to-do because he owns 89 hectares
of land and several draft and domestic animals, besides a sugar mill;
and that the appellant, therefore, could not have committed the crime
of robbery because he did not have to rob, does not necessarily prove
that he is not guilty of the crime with which he was charged. It cannot
be stated that what belongs to the father also belongs to the son.
The contention that the appellant is not Isidoro’s but Teodoro
Bayot’s son (the deceased and Beatriz Montoya stated that the aggressor
was Isidoro’s son), does not have more force or merit than the former,
because “Teodoro” and “Isidoro” are similar names, and it does not
appear that the deceased and Beatriz Montoya knew Teodoro Bayot and
Isidoro Bayot so that they could not have erred. Furthermore, although
it was proven by the defense that in a barrio of the municipality of
Amadeo, a municipality adjoining General Trias, there was a man named
Isidoro Bayot, who is precisely a cousin of the appellant, it does not
appear that said person had a son. This, together with the circumstance
that the description given by Beatriz Montoya before the arrest tallied
with the appellant’s and that she furthermore pointed to him as she saw
him in the morning following the incident, proves how weak such
contention is to detract from the merits of the testimony of the
deceased and that of Beatriz Montoya.
The conclusion arrived at by this court is that the alleged errors
attributed to the lower court are unfounded and that the appellant is
guilty of the complex crime of robbery with homicide. As the
Solicitor-General correctly stated in his brief, the aggravating
circumstances of nighttime, dwelling and craft should be taken into
consideration without any mitigating circumstance, to offset them. The
penalty which should be imposed upon the appellant is the maximum
period of reclusion perpetua to death, but there has been no
unanimity among the members of this court in the imposition of said
maximum penalty, because one is of the opinion that the appellant
should be credited with the mitigating circumstance of lack of
instruction which, according to him, is of itself sufficient to offset
all the above-mentioned aggravating circumstances.
Wherefore, this court hereby reverses the judgment appealed from,
and, finding the appellant guilty of said crime of robbery with
homicide, sentences him, pursuant to the provisions of the last
paragraph of section 133 of the Administrative Code, as amended by
section 2 of Commonwealth Act No. 3, to reclusion perpetua,
to indemnify the heirs of the deceased Emilio Luit in the sum of
Pl,000, plus the sum of P10.50 which is the value of the lamp and the
pig robbed, and to pay the costs. So ordered.
Avancena, C. J., Villa-Real, Abad Santos, and Imperial, JJ., concur.
LAUREL, J.,
I dissent.
I am of the opinion that the herein appellant, Delfin Bayot, has
not been satisfactorily identified as the person who shot and killed
Emilio Luit and who otherwise participated in the robbery which took
place in the night of May 10, 1935, in the sitio of Mulawin, barrio of
Buenavista, municipality of General Trias, Province of Cavite.
The trial judge himself who has had better opportunity of observing
and gauging the credibility of the witnesses makes the following
observation in his decision:
“Por otro lado, Beatriz Montoya declaro en su affidavit Exhibit 1
presentado por la defensa que Emilio Luit le dijo a ella cuando se
dirigian a la casa de Culas, que fue Bayot, hijo de un tal Doro el que
le dispar6. En cuanto a la declaracion ante-mortem, Exhibit
C, es bastante vulnerable, porque no se menciona en ella el nombre de
aquel Bayot a que se referia el occiso, y mas aun, teniendo en cuenta
que Teodoro Bayot tiene varios hijos y desde luego con igual apellido
que el aqui acusado. Dadas las circunstancias del momento en que tuvo
lugar el disparo, no estamos muy convencidos de que Beatriz Montoya
pudiera haber reconocido al aqui acusado, como el que disparo sobre el
desgraciado Emilio Luit.”
That the appellant has not been sufficiently identified is shown
by, or is clearly deducible from, the following facts and circumstances
of record:
(a) The crime was perpetrated at midnight in a remote
barrio; the revolver shot was fired from outside where it was dark;
Beatriz Montoya, the only witness who identified the appellant, was
inside the house while the assailants were outside; Beatriz testified
that immediately upon hearing the detonation she put out the light; the
robbers outside of the house were five in number. Considering the
optical impairment experienced by a person inside a lighted room
looking out into the dark, the finding of the lower court that Beatriz
Montoya could not have recognized the accused finds support in the
common experience.
(b) Beatriz Montoya appears to have executed an affidavit,
Exhibit 1, and yet, in this affidavit no reference is specifically made
to the appellant as the person who had shot her paramour, Emilio Luit,
or the one who had intimidated them thereafter at the point of a
revolver in their house. The deceased, Emilio Luit, had better
opportunity of identifying his assailant because he came down the
house, talked to him and his companions and gave them water, and yet,
in his dying declaration, Exhibit C, he only made reference to one by
the name of Bayot, an old acquaintance of his. It was because of this
that, according to Beatriz herself, soon after the robbery she
accompanied Emilio to the nearest house and on their way the latter
told her that it was a person by the name of Bayot who had shot him (t.
s. n«, PP. 16,17, II).
(c) The assailant is described by Emilio Luit in his dying
declaration, Exhibit C, as follows: “Es mi antiguo conocido, pero
ignoro su nombre. Este Bayot que me dispar6 es un gallerista, bianco,
grueso, y con altura regular y la edad es igual que la mia/’ In the
first place, it should be observed that the name Bayot is such a
generic description which does not identify the appellant herein. It is
not denied that there are many people in the locality by that name and
that in the municipality of Amadeo alone there are more than one
hundred persons by that name. As observed by the trial court, the
appellant himself has many brothers, two of whom are of age according
to the record. Even if we were to accept the qualification given by
Beatriz Montoya that the Bayot referred to is the son of Isidoro, the
qualification does not single out the appellant either because the
evidence shows that Teodoro Bayot is the name of the father
of the appellant; that in the same barrio of Muzon where the family of
the appellant was living there was a man by the name of Isidoro
Bayot, a relative of the appellant. It should be observed also that the
principal witness for the prosecution, Beatriz Montoya, no less than
Emilio Luit before his death, referred, to one Bayot, the son of Isidoro.
In the second place, the uncontradicted evidence for the defense shows
that the appellant is not a “gallerista” and in fact never entered a
cockpit, and that Placido Bayot, Isaac Bayot, Antonio Bayot and Artemio
Bayot are the known “galleristas”. This identifying detail given by the
deceased in his dying declaration does not therefore tally with the
appellant. In the third place, the age description does not coincide,
nor is there any evidence on record to show that the other descriptive
details given by the deceased apply to the appellant. It is true that
Lieutenant Rueda of the Philippine Constabulary testified that he had
arrested the appellant because of the description given him by Beatriz
Montoya, particularly with reference to the appellant having pockmarks,
but it should be observed that this detail is not found in the
description given by the deceased in his dying declaration and that so
many people have pockmarks that this description, like the coca-cola hair cut of the accused, is so uncertain and general to serve as a prudent and reasonable basis for identification.
(d) While the testimony of the lieutenant of barrio, Rufino
Buclatin, is entirely worthless because full of contradictions and
incongruities (pp. 33-37, t. s. n., II), I find, on the other hand, no
reason for not accepting the testimony of Angel Genuino, municipal
president of General Trias, Cavite, who stated that when he
investigated Beatrix Montoya in the morning of May 11 or the day
following the robbery and before the affidavit, Exhibit 1, was
acknowledged by her before him, Beatriz categorically stated that she
was not able to identify the person who had shot Emilio. The following
is the pertinent portion of the testimony of the municipal president
(pp. 43, 44, t. s. n., II) :
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“P.
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¿No es verdad que Vd. examino a Beatriz Montoya en cuanto al suceso de autos en aquella misma manana? |
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R.
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Si, senor. |
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“P.
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¿Que es lo que usted pregunto y que es lo que ella le contests? |
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R.
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Yo le pregunte a ella quien fue el que causo la herida a su esposo. |
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“P.
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¿Que le contests? | |||
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“P.
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Pero ella le dijo a usted que si usted lo pusiera delante ¿podria ella identificar? |
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R.
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Ella me dijo que no podria identificar. |
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“P.
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¿Quien pregunto eso? |
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R.
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Yo. |
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“P.
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¿Donde consta eso?; ino se escribio eso? |
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R.
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No, senor. |
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“P.
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¿Quienes estaban presentes cuando listed investigoa Beatriz Montoya? |
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R.
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El doctor Arnaldo y el teniente del barrio. |
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“P.
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¿Que cargo tenia entonces ese doctor? |
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R.
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Presidente de la Division Sanitaria.” (Underlining is mine.) |
(e) There is no reason either why the testimony of
Florentino Santos, justice of the peace of General Trias, Cavite,
should not be accepted. Like the municipal president, Genuino, he appears to be a disinterested person and his intervention in the case
appears to have been in the performance of his official duties. He
testified (vide his testimony, p. 6, t, s. n., II) that at the
investigation made by him Beatriz Montoya “declard que era un tal Bayot
nada mas, y le pregunte por que sabia; ella me dijo de que asi le conto
su marido en la noche de autos.” This appears to be the reason why the
said justice of the peace, upon due preliminary investigation, ordered
the dismissal of the case against the herein appellant on June 11,
1935. This must be true as Beatriz Montoya herself in her affidavit,
Exhibit 1, makes reference to a conversation to this effect between her
and Emilio, after the occurrence, on their way to the house of one by
the name of Culas (par. 5, affidavit of Beatriz Montoya subscribed
before Angel M. Genuino, municipal president of General Trias).
The appellant appears to belong to a fairly well-to-do family. His
father owns 89 hectares of land in General Trias and Amadeo, Cavite,
besides a sugar mill worth P12,000 and many draft animals, and had
around twenty-five tenants working under him. While, as aptly observed
in the majority opinion, the financial condition of the parents is
beside the question in cases of this nature, I am hesitant in believing
that the appellant, who was apparently living happily with his wife,
has had no past criminal record, possessed of means of livelihood
however limited, did in fact travel from the barrio of Muzon, Amadeo,
to the distant sitio of Mulawin, General Trias, where the crime was
perpetrated, walked five long dreary hours in the dark of the night to
rob and kill two known poor and helpless persons to get nothing in the
end but a petroleum lamp (according to the original complaint filed by
Lieutenant Rueda on May 11, 1935) also a small pig worth eight pesos
(according to the amended complaint filed by the same officer on May 29
of the same year) and also a bolo (according to Beatriz Montoya,
principal witness for the prosecution).
Under the facts and circumstances of this case, it is far better to
acquit a man of such a serious crime upon the ground that the evidence
is not sufficient to prove his guilt, even though he may be guilty,
than to send to the penitentiary during his life-time a man who may be
innocent (People vs. Asinas, 53 Phil., 59, 71).