THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. DIONISIO VILLAMIN, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

This is an appeal taken by the accused
Dionisio Villamin from the judgment rendered by the Court of First
Instance of Laguna which found him guilty of the crime of murder and,
taking into consideration the presence of the qualifying circumstance
of’ evident premeditation and of the generic aggravating circumstances
of nighttime and dwelling, sentenced him to the penalty of reclusion perpetua
with the accessory penalties prescribed by law, to indemnify the heirs
of the deceased Victor Titan in the sum of P1,000, and to pay the costs
of the trial.

In support of his appeal, the appellant assigns as the only error committed by the court a quo in its appealed judgment that of having found him guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime of murder.

The only question of fact to be determined in this appeal is
whether or not the herein accused-appellant is the author of the death
of Victor Titan.

The prosecution attempted to prove that on November 19, 1933,
Victor Titan, who already suspected that his wife Pelagia Soeorro was
having illicit relations with the accused Dionisio Villamin, caught the
latter inside the mosquito net under which his wife was sleeping under
his house in the municipality of Cavinti, Province of Laguna. Upon
seeing the accused, Victor Titan attacked him, infiicting upon him
several wounds which caused his confinement for several days in the
provincial hospital in the municipality of Santa Cruz, Laguna. Victor
Titan immediately filed a complaint for trespass to dwelling against
the accused in the justice of the peace court of Cavinti. Said
complaint was later withdrawn by reason of an amicable settlement had
between the two (Exhibit 5). After said incident, Victor Titan, wishing
to separate his wife from her lover, sent her to live with her sister
Ramona Socorro in the barrio of Talaungan, about seven kilometers from
Cavinti. One day, Narcisa Custodio, mother of Pelagia and Ramona, went
to said barrio to see her daughter Pelagia and at the same time to
verify the news she had received about the accused Dionisio Villamin’s
continued visit to Pelagia. When Narcisa arrived at Ramona’s house she
was informed by the latter that Pelagia had gone to Pedro Custodio’s
house to prepare pandan strips for making hats. Narcisa
Oustodio went to said house and caught the accused Dionisio Villamin
hiding in a room thereof. Angered by said act, Narcisa attacked the
accused with a bolo but did not succeed in wounding him, thanks to the
timely intervention of Calixto Lubuguin and Pedro Custodio. Two days
prior to the crime in question, that is, on May 24, 1934, the
accused-appellant went to visit the wife of the deceased in the barrio
of Talaungan.

On the day of the crime, the deceased Victor Titan was living with
his small daughter Paz in the upper part of his house situated in the poblacion
of the municipality of Cavinti, Province of Laguna. Under said house
lived his sister-in-law Felicidad Socorro, sister of his wife Pelagia
Socorro, Cecilio Flores and the latter’s mother Maria Alcantara. At
about 3.30 o’clock in the morning of May 26, 1934, a shot was heard in
the upper part of Victor Titan’s house. Cecilio Flores and Felicidad
Socorro, who, as already stated, lived under the house, were awakened
by the shot and they ran to the wall separating their room from the
stairway leading to Victor Titan’s room. Peeping through said wall,
they saw two men running down the stairway, the first one carrying a
shotgun. The chief of the municipal police and Lieutenant Gojo of the
Insular Police conducted the investigation early in the morning of said
day and found Victor Titan lying on his mat and bathed in his own
blood, with a wound in the abdomen from which his intestines protruded.
They likewise found the lead pellets, Exhibits B and D; the two used
waddings, Exhibit C, belonging to a caliber 16 shotgun; the mosquito
net, Exhibit E; the two bedsheets, Exhibits F and H, stained with
blood; and the clothes, Exhibit G, worn by the deceased in the morning
of the crime, which are also stained with blood. Victor Titan was
brought to the provincial hospital of Laguna where he died as a result
of the hemorrhage produced by the wound.

Lieutenant Gojo ordered the inspection of all firearms in the
possession of private individuals. The double barrelled caliber 16
shotgun, Exhibit A, was found in the house of Cirilo Villamin, a
relative of the accused-appellant. Upon examination of said shotgun,
traces of powder together with recent marks made by lead pellets were
found in one of the barrels thereof.

When Felicidad Socorro and Cecilio Flores were again investigated
by the municipal authorities in the municipal building of Cavinti five
days later, they declared that one of the men seen by them going down
the stairway, who had nothing in his hand, was the herein
accused-appellant Dionisio Villamin, and the other who carried a gun
seemed to them to be Calixto Lubuguin (vol. II, t. s. n., 31; vol. Ill,
t. s. n., 29). Sometime later, that is; on May 31, 1934, each of these
two witnesses made an affidavit before the justice of the peace of
Cavinti (pages 3 and 6 of the record), ratifying their statements made
in the municipal building.

The accused-appellant Dionisio Villamin denied each and every
statement made by the witnesses for the prosecution relative to his
presence at the scene of the crime immediately after the shot was
fired, and testified that in the morning in question he was sleeping in
his house, which is situated about fifty meters from that of the
deceased, and was awakened by the noise made by the people immediately
after the incident. He did not go down, however, because he believed
that the agents of the authorities were the most logical persons to
attend to it.

The defense likewise presented the affidavits of the witnesses for
the prosecution Cecilio Flores and Felicidad Socorro (Exhibits
2-Villamin and 4-Villamin) denying the truth of their affidavits made
before the municipal authorities of Cavinti and before the justice of
the peace of said municipality.

Testifying on how he came to subscribe the affidavit Exhibit
2-Villamin, Cecilio Flores briefly stated that on November 1, 1934,
Dionisio Villamin, the herein accused-appellant, and Aquilino Villamin
invited him to go to Pagsanjan, telling him that he should go there
alone in order not to be seen going with them, and gave him one peso
for his expenses; that he did so and in said municipality he met said
Dionisio Villamin and Aquilino Villamin with whom he ate in a
restaurant at their expense; that after eating they took a truck for
Lilio, also at the expense of the two Villamins; that upon arriving at
Lilio they went to the house of notary public Fausto Arevalo who
prepared on the typewriter Exhibit 2-Villamin whereby he was made to
state the opposite of what he had stated in the affidavit made before
the justice of the peace of Cavinti and before the authorities of said
municipality; that at first he refused to sign for fear that something
bad might happen to him, but the notary public, seconded by Dionisio
Villamin and Aquilino Villamin, told him that that would save him from
jail; that by reason of his ignorance, he allowed himself to be
convinced; that as he had no cedula, Dionisio Villamin gave him P4 to
buy himself one in the municipality of Lilio, which he did on November
1, 1934; that after having provided himself with a cedula, he signed
the affidavit Exhibit 2-Villamin; that upon the invitation of said
notary public, all of them took their supper and stayed for the night
in the notary public’s house; that on the following day he and Aquilino
Villamin returned to Cavinti while Dionisio Villamin remained behind;
that as he had not yet seen Manila, Dionisio Villamin promised to bring
him to the city to engage in his occupation as barber should Dionisio
Villamin be acquitted.

Felicidad Socorro also testified that one Benito Ramos took her
with her mother and sister to Lilio before the same notary public
Fausto Arevalo and there she was made to sign the affidavit Exhibit
4-VilIamin whereby she recanted her statement made before the municipal
authorities of Cavinti and in her affidavit made before the justice of
the peace of said municipality, upon threats of imprisonment if she
refused to do so.

Taking into consideration the ignorance of the witnesses for the
prosecution Cecilio Flores and Felicidad Socorro, and the psychological
and social phenomenon observed not only among the ignorant people but
also among the educated ones, of refusing to testify on a criminal
incident witnessed by them or of which they have knowledge, for fear of
being implicated or, at least, of being molested with inquisitorial
investigations, besides being the object of vengeance on the part of
the criminal or of his relatives, it is not strange that, upon being
investigated in the midst of the excitement caused by the shot and by
the news of Victor Titan’s death, said witnesses have not given the
names of the persons they had seen going down the stairs of the house
of the deceased, particularly since the accused-appellant is among the
prominent persons as well as a councilor of the municipality of
Cavinti. It does not appear that when the witnesses gave the names of
the accused, upon being investigated anew in the municipal building and
when they made their respective affidavits before the justice of, the
peace of Cavinti five days later, they were under somebody’s influence.
On the other hand, it appears that the affidavits respectively made by
them before notary public Fausto Arevalo in Lilio were influenced by
the assurance made hy Fausto Arevalo and Dionisio Villamin to Cecilio
Flores that the affidavit he was to make would save him from jail, by
the appellant’s promise to bring Cecilio Flores to Manila so that he
could engage in his occupation as barber, and by the threat of
imprisonment made to Felecidad Soeorro if she refused to sign the
affidavit Exhibit 4-Vilamin. The statement made by said witnesses
before the municipal authorities of Cavinti, their affidavits made
before the justice of the peace of said municipality, and their
testimony given during the trial, in all of which they positively
asserted that one of the two men they had seen going down Victor
Titan’s house immediately after hearing the shot was Dionisio Villamin
whom they knew beforehand, cannot in any way and in the least be[
disproved by the affidavits Exhibits 2-Villamin and 4-Villamin made in
Lilio before notary public Fausto Arev4lo by means of promises and
threats.

The shotgun Exhibit A belonging to Restituto Iguaras, the
safekeeping and custody of which had been entrusted by him to his
father-in-law Andres Villamin before he left for Camarines Sur and
which was easily accessible to the herein accusedr-appellant, was
without doubt the gun used by the latter in the morning of the crime
because when it was seized by the authorities, traces of powder were
found. in one of the barrels thereof, indicating that it had recently
been discharged. This silent but eloquent testimony of the facts
contradicted the statement made by Andres Villamin to Lieutenant Gojo
of the Constabulary that the gun had never been used, although Attorney
Cirilo Villamin, son of Andres, later arrived and said that the shotgun
had been used by him to hunt birds in the afternoon of May 25, 1934,
having fired three shots with it. When Cirilo Villamin was asked why
only one barrel showed traces of powder, he gave the improbable answer
that perhaps he might have used only one barrel in his confusion.

In addition to this positive and conclusive evidence that it was
the herein accused-appellant who shot and killed Victor Titan in the
morning in question, there is the psychological and social circumstance
corroborating the statements of the witnesses for the prosecution
Cecilio Plores and Felicidad Socorro. On the day in question, the
accused-appellant Dionisio Villamin had his house on the same street
where the house of the deceased was situated and about fifty meters
away therefrom. According to his own testimony, he was awakened by the
shouts of the people and informed of the incident. In spite of being
acquainted with the deceased, being his neighbor, and notwithstanding
the fact that he was a councilor of the municipality whose duty was to
serve the true interests of the people and to acquaint himself with any
unusual and disturbing event therein for the purpose of informing the
president thereof (sec. 2216, Revised Administrative Code), instead of
obeying the impulse which prompted the inhabitants of said
municipality, who discharged no office, to be present at the scene of
the crime, and complying with his duties, he remained inside his house
to observe what was going on outside and did not go down for fear,
according to him, of becoming a victim of the anger of the relatives of
the deceased. Upon seeing that two policemen were keeping close watch
over his house, telling him that he was suspected of the crime, he did
not protest, as was natural, if he really were innocent. Such attitude
on his part is certainly unbecoming a municipal functionary elected by
the people of his municipality to watch over its peace and
tranquillity. Such negligent failure to comply with a duty and the fear
harbored by him that the relatives of the deceased might take vengeance
against him are clear and unmistakable tokens of a guilty conscience,
and they corroborate the testimony of the two witnesses for the
prosecution Cecilio Flores and Felicidad Socorro that the herein
accused-appellant was really one of the persons seen by them going down
the house of the deceased immediately after the shot was fired, and the
one who shot and killed Victor Titan.

The documentary as well as the oral evidence of record, therefore,
proves beyond reasonable doubt that the accused-appellant Dionisio
Villamin is guilty of the crime of murder.

Wherefore, not finding any error in the appealed judgment, it is affirmed in toto, with the costs to the appellant. So ordered.

Avancena, C. J., Abad Santos, Imperial, Laurel, and Concepcion, JJ., concur.

Diaz, J., concurs in the result.