THE UNITED STATES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. MACARIO DOMINGO ET AL., DEFENDANTS. CELESTINO RAMIREZ AND REGINA DOMINGO, APPELLANTS.

United States versus Domingo

The Case

This is a criminal appeal from a judgment of conviction for the violent killing of Doroteo Cleofas, whose body was found buried in a wood near the house of Macario Domingo in Caloocan. The Government, plaintiff and appellee, prosecuted Macario Domingo, Pedro Mauricio, Celestino Ramirez, and Regina Domingo. Only two of them, Celestino Ramirez and Regina Domingo, appear before the Supreme Court as appellants. The case matters for the bar candidate because it is a clean illustration of the constitutional presumption of innocence and of the rule that a conviction cannot rest on the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness where the accused absolutely denies the charge and no circumstantial fact supports the accusation.

Procedural History

The case was tried in the Court of First Instance, where the Honorable Herbert D. Gale presided. That court rendered a judgment of conviction against the accused, sentencing Regina Domingo and Celestino Ramirez, among others, to twenty years of reclusion temporal. Macario Domingo died after judgment had been rendered in the case in first instance, and Pedro Mauricio, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, did not appeal. The two remaining convicts, Regina Domingo and Celestino Ramirez, appealed from the judgment of conviction. The appeal reached the Supreme Court, which rendered this decision.

Facts

About ten o'clock on the night of one of the last days of November 1910, Pedro Cabigting, a curandero attending a patient in a house in the barrio of Bagbaguin, pueblo of Caloocan, heard a voice, apparently from the neighboring house of Macario Domingo, utter the words, "Jesus, Maria y Jose, pardon me." He left the house intending to go to that of his neighbor, whose wife was also sick. Near the yard of Domingo's house he heard a groan, and he saw a person stretched out in the zaguan or on the ground under the house, surrounded by Macario Domingo, Pedro Mauricio, and Celestino Ramirez, whom he knew previously, even to their voices. Mauricio asked Domingo, "Why have you treated him so?" and Domingo replied, "It is because this son of a b_______ would not cease making love to my daughter." Mauricio then said it would be better to kill him outright, and Celestino Ramirez said, "Nothing can now be done but to finish him and conceal him in order that it may not get to the public and cause us trouble." The curandero then returned to the house whence he had come.

Several days afterwards, Julian Cleofas, brother of Doroteo Cleofas, who had disappeared, found an anonymous letter on his gate informing him that his brother had been murdered, who the murderers were, and where the corpse was buried. He reported the matter to the police of Caloocan, and, with Lieutenant Dominador Aquino, Sergeant Indalecio Tan, and others, investigated. They arrested Pedro Mauricio and Macario Domingo and found under the latter's house dried blood stains covered with earth, and the strips of bamboo forming the floor of the house untied directly above the spot in the zaguan where the blood stains were noticed. Guided by the anonymous letter, they found in a wood 120 meters from Macario Domingo's house the place where the body of Doroteo Cleofas was buried. It was exhumed in the presence of Julian Cleofas, who identified it as that of his brother, notwithstanding its advanced stage of decomposition. A hemp cord was wound around the wrist of the right hand, the flesh was gone from the neck, and the legs and arms were doubled up. The physician who was president of the board of health of Caloocan examined the body.

The trial court concluded that Doroteo Cleofas was violently killed on that night in the yard or zaguan of Macario Domingo's house, and that his body was afterwards buried by his slayers in the neighboring wood, where the officers found it about January 23 of the following year. The acts were brought to light through the declarations of the curandero, Pedro Cabigting, and the statements made by the alleged perpetrators to Lieutenant Aquino and Sergeant Tan of the Caloocan police. Against Regina Domingo, the prosecution relied on Lieutenant Aquino's testimony that she had revealed to him that, in obedience to her father's orders, she had sent for and invited Doroteo Cleofas to the zaguan of her house on the night in question, that when he entered she struck him with a bolo she had ready, and that as soon as he fell her father and a brother of his came down from the house and finally killed him. She absolutely denied the charge and the acts attributed to her. Against Celestino Ramirez, the prosecution relied on the testimony of the curandero, Pedro Cabigting.

Issues

• Whether or not the testimony of Lieutenant Dominador Aquino, standing alone and uncorroborated, is sufficient to hold Regina Domingo guilty as a coprincipal or as an accomplice in the killing of Doroteo Cleofas.
• Whether or not the testimony of the sole witness for the prosecution, the curandero Pedro Cabigting, uncorroborated by any other evidence, is sufficient to hold Celestino Ramirez guilty as a coprincipal or as an accomplice in the same killing.

Applicable Provisions

Section 57 of General Orders, Number 58, provides:

A defendant in a criminal action shall be presumed to be innocent until the contrary is proved, and in case of reasonable doubt that his guilt is satisfactorily shown he shall be entitled to an acquittal.

The Court applies this presumption in favor of both appellants, holding that they must be acquitted for want of satisfactory and conclusive proof of their guilt.

Article 16 of the Penal Code, cited by the Court in connection with Regina Domingo's silence, provides:

The following are exempt from criminal liability: First. Any person who, at the time of the commission of the crime, is imbecile or insane, unless the latter has acted during a lucid interval. Second. Any person who, at the time of the commission of the crime, is under nine years of age. Third. Any person who, while performing a lawful act with due care, causes an injury by mere accident without fault or intention of causing it. Fourth. Any person who acts in defense of his person or rights, provided that the following circumstances concur: First. Unlawful aggression. Second. Reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel it. Third. Lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending himself. Fifth. Any person who acts in defense of the person or rights of his spouse, ascendants, descendants, or legitimate, natural, or adopted brothers or sisters, or of his relatives by affinity in the same degrees, and those by consanguinity within the fourth civil degree, provided that the first and second requisites prescribed in the next preceding circumstance are present, and the further requisite, in case the provocation was given by the person attacked, that the one making defense had no part therein. Sixth. Any person who acts in obedience to an order issued by a superior for some lawful purpose. Seventh. Any person who fails to act when the law requires him to act, provided that the failure to act is due to some lawful or insuperable cause.

The Court invokes the principle of exemption from liability for failure to report, reasoning that Regina Domingo was not obliged to report the occurrence to the authorities, nor was she responsible for her silence, on account of the kinship between herself and the principal alleged perpetrator of the crime.

Ruling

On the first issue, the Court held that it is improper to hold Regina Domingo guilty as a coprincipal or even as an accomplice merely from the testimony of Lieutenant Aquino regarding the statements she allegedly made to him. Such testimony as to statements attributed to her is insufficient in itself alone to determine her guilt, as it is not supported nor corroborated by any other evidence, or even by any circumstantial fact tending to produce in the mind full conviction of her guilt. She absolutely denies the charge and the acts attributed to her. The circumstance that she was the sweetheart of the deceased, or that the latter was courting her, is not a sufficient reason to hold her to be a coprincipal in the killing. Pedro Cabigting, who went to the scene of the crime when it had just been committed, did not reveal whether Regina Domingo was also present there. Neither her father, when alive, nor Pedro Mauricio made the slightest mention of her having taken part in the crime. And even on the supposition that she was in her father's house that night and when the victim's body was buried in the adjoining wood, such facts could not serve as grounds for her incrimination or responsibility, for even on that hypothesis she was not obliged to report the occurrence to the authorities, nor was she responsible for her silence, on account of the kinship between herself and the principal alleged perpetrator of the crime.

On the second issue, the Court held that, in view of the fact that Celestino Ramirez denies the charge absolutely, as well as any participation in the criminal act, the mere testimony of the curandero, Pedro Cabigting, is not sufficient evidence whereupon to find him guilty as a coprincipal or even as an accomplice, for the reason that the testimony of this sole witness for the prosecution does not appear in the record to be corroborated by any other evidence, even circumstantial, of the guilt of Ramirez, against whom there is no other incriminating evidence, even from the policemen who searched for him to arrest him. The Court added that, were it permissible to take up the responsibility of Macario Domingo and Pedro Mauricio, the testimony of the arresting policemen might perhaps be admissible and effective against them, but with respect to Regina Domingo and Ramirez it is neither proper nor just to admit such testimony as proof.

Applying the presumption of innocence, the Court concluded that the appellants must be acquitted for the want of satisfactory and conclusive proof of their guilt. In view of the nature of this finding, and of the fact that one of the two defendants found guilty had acquiesced in his sentence and was serving it, and the other had died, the Court deemed it futile to discuss whether the crime should be classified as murder or as simple homicide and whether any qualifying circumstance attended its commission.

Doctrine

Every defendant in a criminal action is presumed innocent until the contrary is proved, and in case of reasonable doubt that his guilt is satisfactorily shown, he is entitled to an acquittal. This is the rule of Section 57 of General Orders, Number 58, and it is the foundation of this decision.

Conviction requires proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The uncorroborated testimony of a single witness, where the accused absolutely denies the charge and no circumstantial fact supports the accusation, is insufficient to establish guilt as a coprincipal or even as an accomplice.

The mere fact that an accused is the sweetheart of the deceased, or that the deceased was courting her, is not a sufficient reason to hold her liable as a coprincipal in the killing.

Silence in the face of a crime does not incriminate a person who is not obliged by law to report the occurrence, and who is not responsible for her silence on account of kinship with the principal alleged perpetrator, consistent with the principle of exemption reflected in Article 16 of the Penal Code.

Disposition

The judgment appealed from was reversed with reference to Regina Domingo and Celestino Ramirez, and they were acquitted, with two-fourths of the costs of both instances de oficio, and ordered immediately released through an order to the Director of Prisons unless held on some other charge.

Remember This

The single line worth memorizing is that the presumption of innocence entitles an accused to acquittal in case of reasonable doubt, and that the uncorroborated testimony of one witness, against an absolute denial and with no circumstantial support, cannot sustain a conviction. Examiners use this case to test the sufficiency of the prosecution's evidence and the application of the presumption of innocence where the only proof is the lone testimony of a witness or an extrajudicial statement denied by the accused.