THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. AURELIO ESPINOSA @ “ROLLY” AND JESUS FLORO Y JUNDOY, ACCUSED. JESUS FLORO Y JUNDOY, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.

Ariel Mamucod got a black eye and his
father wanted to know why.  But he never
did find out.  On his way to the barangay
chairman, he was accosted by two persons, who hit him in the head and stabbed
him in the chest and back.  The following
day, Jaime Mamucod was dead.

The incident happened on May
6, 1981 but an information for murder was filed only on July 19, 1983.^[1]
Accused were Aurelio Espinosa and Jesus Floro.  Espinosa was never tried and remains at
large.   Only Floro
is appealing the decision of the trial court sentencing him to reclusion perpetua and payment of P30,000.00
civil indemnity to the victim’s heirs.^[2]

The chief witnesses for the prosecution were the victim’s two
sons, Arnold and Ariel.  Both of them
were with their father when the jeep he was driving was blocked by the killers
at Almeda Street,
in Santa Cruz, Manila,
at about 9 o’clock in the
evening.  The brothers identified the
culprits as Espinosa and Floro.  It was Floro who
first attacked Jaime, hitting him in the head with a hard object about a foot long and wrapped in a
newspaper.  When the victim fell off the
jeep as a result of the blow, Espinosa stabbed him repeatedly in the back with
a fan knife.  Floro,
using an ice pick, stabbed Jaime several times in the chest.  Jaime ran for his life but his attackers
pursued and continued stabbing him until the latter fell into a ditch.  The two assailants then walked away
fast.  Ariel boarded his dying father on
a tricycle and brought him to the Jose
Reyes Memorial Hospital,
where he expired from his wounds the next day.^[3]

The testimonies of the brothers were corroborated by Manuel
Buenaventura, who said he saw the stabbing while he was on a tricycle waiting to cross Abad Santos Street.  He also identified Jaime’s killers as the two
accused.^[4]
The necropsy report submitted by Dr. Luis Larion,
medico-legal officer of the Western Police District, (which was admitted by the
defense without his testimony) declared that Jaime Mamucod
died as a result of “profuse hemorrhage and shock due to multiple stab
wounds penetrating the chest and piercing the right lung and branches of the
right pulmonary artery and vein.”^[5]
Another witness for the prosecution, Sgt. Juanito
Yang of the Western Police District, testified that it was he who investigated
the killing and took the statements of the victim’s two sons implicating
Espinosa and Floro.^[6]

The defense invoked alibi. 
Testifying for himself, Floro admitted that he
was at the basketball court earlier in the evening of May 6, 1981, as
he was coaching one of the competing teams.  But he left later because the games had been
called off and at the time of the stabbing he was in his house on Almeda Street.  On cross examination, he declared that his
house was only about two hundred meters or two or three minutes walk from the
scene of the crime.^[7]

 A prosecution witness,
Lilia Silva, was also asked to testify for the defense because she said she saw
Espinosa chasing and stabbing Jaime when the latter stumbled but made no
mention of Floro. 
When asked by defense counsel if
she saw Floro stabbing the victim, she said she did
not.^[8]

The appellant’s brief faulted the trial court for accepting the
testimonies of the Mamucod brothers despite their
inconsistencies and contradictions.  The
defense stressed that whereas Arnold
said Floro hit Jaime in the nape of the neck, Ariel
said it was on the top of the head, and that while Arnold
said Jaime was stabbed while lying on the ground, Ariel said it was while his
father was standing.  It was also unbelievable that after the stabbing Ariel should say, “Tatay, let us go home,” when the natural thing to do
was to rush the dying man to the nearest hospital for immediate treatment.

Noting that the necropsy report spoke only of stab wounds and not
punctured wounds, the defense also stressed that this proved the brothers were
lying when they swore that their father had been stabbed by Floro
with an ice pick.

The Court has examined
the evidence of the parties and sees no reason for overturning the findings of
Judge Rosalio A. de Leon, who had the opportunity to
observe the witnesses on the stand and assess their credibility by the various
indicia available to the trial court but not reflected in the record.  The demeanor of the person on the stand can
draw the line between fact and fancy. 
The forthright answer or the hesitant pause, the quivering voice or the
angry tone, the flustered look or the sincere gaze, the modest blush or the
guilty blanch – these can reveal if the witness is telling the truth or lying in his teeth.  Absent then a showing
that the conclusions of the trial court are arbitrary or without basis, they
must be regarded with respect and accepted as conclusive on appeal.

The discrepancies in the
declarations of Arnold and Ariel are not unnatural or evidence of perjury.  When their father was attacked, Arnold was seated at the front of the jeep beside
Jaime and Ariel was sitting behind them.^[9] The two brothers had therefore different
vantage points that gave each of them a separate view of the incident. 
Moreover, it should also be considered that the man being stabbed before
their very eyes was their father.  Under
this traumatizing and shocking circumstance, the two sons, who were then only
sixteen and fifteen respectively,
can hardly be expected to
remember the grisly stabbing in perfect detail.

As for Lilia Silva, her
testimony is less than conclusive of Floro’s
innocence.  The mere fact that she did
not see Floro at the scene of the crime does not
prove he was not there as she obviously was narrating only the latter part of
the incident.  Besides, she added that
there were many people around, which could be the reason she did not notice Floro.  At any rate,
her testimony cannot cancel the sworn declarations of Arnold and Ariel that they actually saw Espinosa and Floro killing Jaime Mamucod.

The two sons could hardly have made a mistake regarding this matter. 
Indeed, the memory of these men is not easily blurred and must have been
indelibly imprinted in their young and impressionable minds.  They had no motive for falsely identifying
Espinosa and the accused?appellant. 
The only reason for naming them is the logical one:  that Espinosa and Floro
were the men who killed their father.

The contention that the necropsy report did not mention any
punctured wounds must be rejected.  The phrase “stab wounds” is
used generically to include all wounds that may be caused “by weapons such
as knives, scissors, three-cornered files, or ice picks with a circular
shaft, all possessing a sharp point but having blades of different
shapes”.^[10]
Stabbing may be done with an ice pick and the puncture is correctly called a stab wound.

The appellant’s brief did not dispute the finding of the trial
judge that Floro was in hiding for more than two years,^[11]
which may explain why the information against him could not be filed in 1981,
when Jaime Mamucod was killed.  It would also suggest that the
accused-appellant is not innocent as he claims, for as we have repeatedly
observed, unexplained flight is an indication of guilt.^[12]
“The guilty flee when no man pursueth but the
innocent are as bold as a lion.”

Finally, there is the question of conspiracy.  Floro would
distance himself from Espinosa and impute the whole blame to his absent
co-accused for the killing of Jaime Mamucod.  The evidence shows, however, that they acted
in concert in pursuit of a common design. 
Floro and Espinosa together blocked Jaime’s
jeep and told him not to disturb the basketball game (although there was none
in progress).  Floro
first hit Jaime with the foot-long stick or pipe earlier concealed in a
newspaper.  Then Espinosa drew his
fan-knife and stabbed Jaime in the back. 
Then Floro drew his ice pick and stabbed Jaime
in the chest.  When Jaime ran away from
them, they pursued him and continued stabbing him.  Finally, with their victim dying in the
ditch, both assailants fled together and disappeared.  It is clear from their acts that the two had
come to an agreement concerning the attack on Jaime and decided to commit
it.  There was thus a conspiracy that
made each conspirator liable for the other’s acts.

We agree that the killing of Jaime Mamucod
was attended with treachery, qualifying the crime to murder.  The victim was totally defenseless.  He was caught by surprise when Espinosa and Floro, whom he considered his friends, suddenly attacked
him.  Without warning, he was hit in the head, then stabbed in
the back.  Thus disabled, he was stabbed in the chest.  And even as he ran for his life, he was pursued and stabbed some more
when he stumbled.  He never had a chance
to save his life.

What prompted the vicious attack must remain a mystery to this
Court.  Proof of motive is, of course,
not necessary for the conviction of the accused-appellant in view of his
positive identification as one
of the killers.  Even so, one may well
wonder why a human life was
taken for no apparent reason and another life must now be needlessly spent in
the shadow of the prison bars.

WHEREFORE, the appealed judgment is AFFIRMED in toto, with costs against the accused-appellant.

SO ORDERED.

Narvasa, (Chairman), Gancayco, Griño-Aquino, and Medialdea, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Rollo, p. 4.

^[2]
Penned by Judge Rosalio de Leon of the Regional Trial
Court, Manila.

^[3]
TSN, January 6, 1984, pp.
11-12; Ibid, p. 14; Ibid, p. 14; Ibid,
p. 15; Ibid, p. 16; TSN, February
15, 1984, p. 8; Ibid, pp. 5-7; Ibid, p.
9; Ibid, pp. 10-12; Ibid, p. 14; Ibid,
pp. 16-17.

^[4]
TSN, April 16, 1985, pp.
3-6.

^[5]
TSN, March 19, 1985, p. 11.

^[6]
Ibid, pp. 3-4.

^[7]
TSN, June 14, 1985, pp.
3-4; Ibid, p. 7.

^[8]
TSN, February 26, 1985, pp.
2 and 4.

^[9]
TSN, February 15, 1984, p.
9.

^[10]
Gonzales, Vance, Helpern & Umberger,
Legal Medicine, second edition, p. 335.

^[11]
Decision, Rollo, p. 48.

^[12]
People vs. Dejucos, 156 SCRA 469; People vs.
Hecto, 135 SCRA 113; People vs. Millarpe, 134 SCRA 555.