THE UNITED STATES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. CHIONG SONGCO, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

The trial court  found  and the evidence of  record  conclusively establishes that the defendant and appellant threw the contents of a bottle of sulphuric acid into the face and on the body of the complaining witness, inflicting wounds which resulted in the illness  (enfermedad) of the injured man for more than  thirty days.  It was further  proven that the attack was  made treacherously (con alevosia), as that circumstance is denned  in  article  10 of the Penal  Code,  it having been made at  night, from behind  the shelter of a sheet of zinc, and at  a time when the victim was wholly unprepared to make any defense, he not having any reason to anticipate an assault so unexpected and unusual.

The trial  court found the  defendant guilty of the crime of lesiones denned in subsection 4 of article 416  read together with article 417 of the Penal Code, marked with the aggravating circumstance of nocturnity, and sentenced him to imprisonment for 1 year and  1  day.  But the commission of the crime having been marked  with the qualifying circumstance of treachery,  the special  penalty  prescribed in the last paragraph of article 416  should have been inflicted, that is to say,  the  penalty of prision  correccional in its minimum and medium degrees.  This penalty should  have been imposed in its medium degree, the commission of the offense not  having been marked by aggravating or extenuating  circumstances,  the  aggravating circumstance  of nocturnity as found  by  the trial  court being taken into consideration in the finding of the existence of the qualifying circumstance of alevosia.

We should add that the crime as committed  is not in any wise related to the offenses  defined and penalized in article 417 of the code, as found by the  trial court, the provisions of which clearly relate to the use of poisons and the like in an entirely different manner.

The sentence  imposed by  the trial  court is  therefore reversed, and  instead thereof,  we sentence the defendant and appellant to two years of prision correccional, together with the accessory penalties prescribed by law, and to the payment of the costs of both instances.

Arellano, C. J., Mapa, Moreland, and Trent, JJ.,  concur.