PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. MARIO AGUILUZ, ALIAS “ROCK-ROCK,” ACCUSED-APPELLANT.

Accused-appellant Mario Aguiluz, alias “Rock-Rock,” was
charged on January 20, 1989 in Criminal Case No. DH-078-89 of the Regional
Trial Court of Dinalupihan, Bataan, Branch 5, with the crime of murder, in an
information which reads as follows:

“That on or about December 4, 1988, at nighttime purposely
sought to better accomplish his criminal design, at Brgy. Daang Bago,
Dinalupihan, Bataan, Philippines, and within the jurisdiction of this Honorable
Court, the said accused, with intent to kill, did then and there willfully,
unlawfully and feloniously attack, assault and use personal violence upon
RICARDO CRUZ Y GUEVARRA by then and there hitting him with a lead pipe on his
head and on different parts of his body, thereby inflicting upon the said
RICARDO CRUZ Y GUEVARRA mortal
injuries which were the direct and immediate cause of his death thereafter, to
the damage and prejudice of the heirs of the said Ricardo Cruz y Guevarra.

CONTRARY TO LAW.” ^[1]

When arraigned, accused, assisted by counsel, entered a plea of
not guilty. In the pre-trial stage,
both prosecution and defense failed to agree on certain proposed admissions
respectively sought by them, hence trial on the merits ensued.

We give credit to the succinct factual presentation of the case
by the prosecution which, in our examination of the evidence on record, we find
to be correct and which we accordingly reproduce hereunder:

“On December 4, 1988, at about 8:00 o’clock in the evening,
while the victim Ricardo Cruz was driving his owner-type jeep along Barangay
Daang Bago, Dinalupihan, Bataan, together with Genaro Ballan, a truck helper in
his business who was seated in the front seat beside him, a passenger jeep
suddenly approached them and bumped their vehicle (pp. 10-14, tsn, March 8,
1989).

“The victim stopped his engine, went down and looked at the
front portion of his jeep. Appellant
suddenly came and, from behind the victim, hit the latter with a lead pipe on
the back right portion of his head above the right ear (pp. 14-20, tsn, id.). Appellant came from the passenger jeep which
bumped the victim’s vehicle (pp. 17-18, tsn, id.). His companions who were with him in the
passenger jeep were Mario Garcia, Jr., Bernabe delos Reyes, Restituto Cabiling
and another whom eyewitness Ballan could not identify (pp. 26-­29, tsn, id.). The companions of appellant were positioned
behind him at the time that appellant
landed the fatal blow on the victim’s head (pp. 22-23, tsn, id.).

“When the victim was hit on the head with a lead pipe, he fell
down (p. 22, tsn, id.). Appellant and his companions then ran away and left their passenger jeep at the place where it bumped the victim’s
vehicle (id.). Ballan clearly
saw the entire criminal incident and positively identified appellant as the
perpetrator thereof because he was positioned only two (2) meters away from
them (p. 20, tsn, id.).

“Thereafter, Ballan
lifted the fallen victim, boarded him in a jeep and brought him to the
Dinalupihan District Hospital (id.). The victim died of massive hemorrhage in the brain as a result of the
lacerated wound on his head and the depressed fracture on his skull (Exhibit
‘C’).”^[2]

On the other hand, appellant gives his own version as follows:

“It appears that at about 8:00 o’clock in the evening of
December 4, 1988, the passenger jeep being driven by Bernabe delos Reyes, with
the accused Mario Aguiluz and Restituto Cabiling both seated in the front seat
with Bernabe, was on its way out of the squatters’ area of Daang Bago,
Dinalupihan, Bataan and about to cross the national highway, on their way to
corner Daang Bago, Dinalupihan, Bataan, to San Pablo, Lubao, and Guagua,
Pampanga and when they were about to take a left turn from the middle of the
highway, all of a sudden, the owner-driven jeep, owned and then being driven by
the deceased Ricardo Cruz y Guevarra, where allegedly prosecution witness
Genaro Ballan was riding, bumped the left middle portion of the passenger
jeepney. Cruz and Ballan were allegedly
then on their way to Orani, Bataan coming from Lubao, Pampanga.

“By reason of the sudden hard impact caused by the bumping of
the front of the owner-driven jeep to the left middle part of the passenger
jeep Ricardo Cruz y Guevarra fell from the jeep.

“Ricardo Cruz was thereafter immediately brought by Ballan to
the Dinalupihan District Hospital at Dinalupihan, Bataan, and was attended to
and examined by Dra. Priscila Chavez Ignacio who found Cruz to be positive
of alcoholic breath. ‘You can just
smell the patient that he took some alcoholic drinks’. (pp. 57-58. t.s.n., Sept. 6, 1989).

“That somebody who accompanied the patient (Ricardo Cruz) told
Dra. Priscila Chavez Ignacio that Cruz figured in a vehicular accident (p. 57,
supra).”^[3]

After weighing the evidence adduced, both testimonial and
documentary, the court a quo found accused guilty of the crime of
murder as charged, and sentenced him “to suffer imprisonment with the
maximum penalty provided by law for said crime of Reclusion Perpetua,
and, for same accused to indemnify the widow of the late Ricardo Cruz, Mrs.
Yolanda Cruz, the amount of P60,615.55 for actual and compensatory damages,
plus the amount of P30,000.00 for the death of her late husband, Ricardo Cruz,
plus the amount of P30,000.00 by way of moral damages, plus P1,000.00 for every
Court appearance in the hearing of this case paid to lawyers, Attys. Restituto
Luz and Avelino Morales by same widow of the victim in this crime.”^[4]
Dissatisfied, the defense has taken this appeal.

Once again, as in most criminal cases, the issue is reduced to
one essentially of credibility, a weighing of the evidence of the prosecution
against that of the defense through an assessment of their respective
merits. In this respect, it is firmly
settled that the findings of the trial court are given weight and the highest
degree of respect by the appellate court,^[5] and
may be disregarded only where substantial errors have been committed or
determinative facts have been overlooked and which otherwise would have
dictated a different conclusion or verdict. In the instant case, it does not appear to the Court that the trial
court committed any error in extending superior credit to evidence adduced by
the People.

The prosecution’s cause is replete with facts established by
overwhelming evidence which the defense failed to refute. Prosecution eyewitness Genaro Ballan, on
whose testimony the People principally built this case, was observed and
declared by the court below to have testified in a straightforward manner,
untainted by bias or partiality, much less by hostility or hatred towards
appellant. As said court specifically
noted in its decision, although Ballan had only reached the educational
attainment of Grade Three, and despite the rigid and thorough cross-examination
by the defense, he firmly and adamantly stood pat on what he personally knew
about the case.^[6]
This prompted the court to invoke the rule that the testimony of one witness,
if credible and positive and if it satisfies the court beyond reasonable doubt,
is sufficient to convict.^[7]

His testimony that the victim was hit on the upper right side of
his head just above the right ear is con­firmed by the findings of Drs. Sergio
Alteza, Desiderio Moraleda and Priscila Chavez Ignacio, the physicians who
attended to the victim after the incident. The medical and autopsy findings on the injury of the victim revealed
that he sustained a lacerated wound on the right parietal temporal area of his
head right above his right ear and, upon X-ray examination, he was found to
have a depressed fracture on the same area in his skull where he exhibited
symptoms of severe brain injury.^[8]

On the other hand, the testimony of the defense witnesses, aside
from being improbable, are full of inconsistencies and postulations of facts
which depart from common human experience. We will not clutter this opinion with the many inconsistencies and
improbabilities of their testimonies, as correctly catalogued by the lower
court, but we will just dwell on the main points of their prevarications.

Bernabe de los Reyes testified that the victim fell from the
jeep, forehead first, due to the impact of the collision.^[9] This
is belied by the categorical testimony of Dr. Alteza to the effect that the
deceased suffered no other wound, bruise or anything of the sort other than the
only wound on the right parietal temporal area of his head above his right
ear. He also opined that the probable
cause of the lacerated wound was a forcible impact from a blunt instrument or
object, for lacerated wounds are only produced, according to him, by a blunt
instrument like a lead pipe (“tubo”).^[10] On
his part, Dr. Moraleda, another medico-legal officer, corroborated said finding
and declared that the cement pavement is not a blunt instrument but a blunt
surface.^[11]

What further undermines the version of De los Reyes is the fact
that his two companions at the time of the incident, Restituto Cabiling and
appellant Mario Aguiluz himself, testified that they never saw Ricardo Cruz
fall from his owner-type jeep upon or after the collision.^[12]
The trial court accordingly found the testimony of De los Reyes incredible,
considering that these three persons were admittedly sitting together and
alongside each other in the front seat of the passenger jeepney at the time of
the collision with the victim’s owner-type jeep.^[13]
Moreover, even if De los Reyes might have blocked the view of his two
companions who were just seated beside him on the front seat, the spectacle of
Ricardo Cruz being forcefully and bodily thrown out of his jeep would have
easily attracted the attention of Cabiling and Aguiluz who were facing and, in
all probability, looking in the direction of that jeep.

Again, if the deceased indeed fell from his jeep, as the defense
alleges, he should have fallen on the left side of the jeep and he would have
suffered injuries or bruises on the left side of his head or body. But, as aforestated, the deceased suffered
no other injury aside from the one on the right side of his head.^[14]

The truth of the matter is, as established by witness Ballan and
found by the lower court,
appellant Mario Aguiluz rushed toward the victim from behind as the latter was
examining the front portion of his vehicle. Appellant then hit the deceased Ricardo Cruz on the right side of the
head with a lead pipe, causing the latter to fall on the cement pavement. What could have prompted appellant to attack
the deceased, as concluded by the trial court, was his resentment or anger
which was consequently directed to the cause of the collision and impelled by
what said court calls the “false courage due to his having dr(u)nk four
(4) bottles of beer.”^[15] This
Court takes judicial notice of the fact that generally a person under the
influence of liquor, even if not to the point of intoxication as in this case,
is prone to be impulsive, irascible, or combative and less inhibited in his
reaction to whatever offends him.

De los Reyes also alleged that due to the violent impact of the
collision, the steering wheel of the owner-type jeep was detached and fell on
the seat of the driver.^[16]
Again, this is exposed as an outright falsehood. Photographs do not lie, and it glaringly appears in the picture^[17]
taken shortly after the time of the collision that the steering wheel of the
jeep driven by the deceased was not detached and it never fell on any seat. Furthermore, since Ricardo Cruz was then
driving the jeep and necessarilly manning the steering wheel, he would
naturally have been forcibly pushed forward and a part of his chest, stomach or
fore­head then facing the steering wheel and windshield of the jeep would have
sustained contusions or lacerations as a consequence. However, as declared by Ballan and noted with approval by the
trial court, the impact of the collision of the two vehicles was not so strong.^[18]

The defense also asserts that the victim’s death was merely
accidental. If this were so, we agree
with the trial court that De los Reyes did not have to pretend that he was
never the driver of the passenger jeep at the time that an investigation of the
incident was being conducted, nor did he have to hide in a store near the place
of the incident. It is a curious fact
why, after the incident, appellant and his companions abandoned their vehicle
at and fled from the scene of the crime. An innocent person, in the normal course of events, would not have done
so but would have readily come forward to present himself to an investigator
and explain or demonstrate that he was not at fault. It may be trite, but we need merely recall the oft-repeated
dictum that “the wicked flee even when no man pursueth, whereas the
righteous are as brave as the lion.”^[19]

Further bolstering the case for the
prosecution is the fact that appellant was positively identified by witness
Ballan. The latter could not have been
mistaken in identifying the former because Ballan had known him even prior to
the incident.^[20]
There was also no proof of any ill-motive on
the part of Ballan. Accordingly,
such identification should be given weight since witnesses would not falsely
impute to the accused a serious criminal offense if it is not the untarnished
truth.^[21]
Moreover, motive becomes relevant, and its absence may assume determinative
significance, only when the accused has not been positively identified, and proof
thereof becomes essential only when the evidence of the commission of a crime
is purely circumstantial or is inconclusive. This Court has time and again ruled that lack of motive does not
preclude conviction when the crime and the participation of the accused therein
are definitely established.^[22]

The defense also belabors the delay of Ballan in informing the
police authorities about the incident.^[23] This
does not, however, adversely affect the credibility of said witness. The failure of a witness to immediately
report to the police authorities the crime he had witnessed should not be taken against him. It is not uncommon for a witness to a crime
to show some reluctance about getting involved in a criminal case. The natural reticence of most people to get
involved in a criminal case is of judicial notice.^[24]

In sum, it is well settled that evidence to be believed must not
only proceed from the mouth of a credible witness, but must be credible in
itself such as the common experience and observation of mankind can approve as
probable under the circumstances.^[25]
Under the foregoing disquisition, we cannot subscribe to the evidence presented
by the defense and, instead, we uphold the convincing evidence of the
prosecution as found and duly assayed by the court below.

Nevertheless, appellant cannot be convicted of murder as
charged. We entertain serious doubts,
under the proven facts, as to whether he acted with alevosia when he
attacked the victim. It will be
recalled that right after the collision, the victim went to examine the front
part of his jeep for damages it may have sustained. Appellant, on his part, forthwith alighted from the passenger
jeepney, immediately went behind the victim and dealt the latter a blow with a
lead pipe. As a rule, a sudden attack
by the assailant, whether frontally or from behind, is treachery if such mode
of attack was coolly and deliberately adopted by him,^[26]
his purpose being to deprive the victim of a chance to either fight or retreat.^[27]
The rule does not apply, however, where the sudden attack was not preconceived
and intended as the means but was triggered by the sudden infuriation on the
part of the accused because of an act of the victim,^[28]
or where their meeting was purely accidental.^[29] It
appears, therefore, that these two exceptive doctrines apply to the acts and to
the benefit of appellant.

Furthermore, there is another consideration, evidently overlooked
by the trial court and the contending parties themselves, which seriously
militates against a conviction for murder in this case. The information, which we have purposely
quoted in full, does not allege the qualifying circumstance of treachery nor do
the particulars of the indictment as formulated constitute the same, and there
is no other circumstance alleged which could qualify the killing to
murder. Obviously, neither can
treachery be considered even as an aggravating circumstance since, as already
discussed, the acts of the accused do not constitute alevosia. We, therefore, reject the
inexplicable holding of the trial court that there was “an aggravating
circumstance attendant to the same for the reason that accused did hit the
victim from behind with a fatal blow by the use of a lead pipe (tubo) on his
head, x x x.”^[30]

One aggravating circumstance is in fact alleged, that is,
nighttime, but again there is no proof that the same was purposely sought or
taken advantage of by appellant, or that the same facilitated his commission of
the crime. Thus, whether we adopt the
subjective or objective tests laid down by decisional rules, nocturnity cannot
be considered against appellant.^[31] His
liability, therefore, is for the felony of homicide, without any modifying
circumstance.

WHEREFORE, the judgment of the court a quo in Criminal Case No. DH-078-89
is hereby ANNULLED and SET ASIDE, and another is hereby RENDERED finding
accused-appellant guilty of homicide and imposing on him an indeterminate
sentence of ten (10) years of prision mayor, as minimum, to seventeen
(17) years and four (4) months of reclusion temporal, as maximum. Appellant is further sentenced to pay a
death indemnity of P50,000.00 in line with current jurisprudential policy,
P60,615.55 as and for compensatory damages, P30,000.00 by way of moral damages
and P10,000.00 as attorney’s fees.

SO ORDERED.

Melencio-Herrera, (Chairman), Paras, Padilla, and Nocon, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Original Record, 1.

^[2]
Brief for the Appellee, 3-4; Rollo, 115-116.

^[3]
Brief for the Appellant, 5-6; ibid., 68-69.

^[4]
Original Record, 269; per Executive Judge Jose T. Bartolome.

^[5]
People vs. Caraig, G.R. No. 91162, October 3, 1991.

^[6]
Original Record, 268.

^[7]
People vs. Orzame, 17 SCRA 161 (1961).

^[8]
Original Record, 253.

^[9]
TSN, September 20, 1989, 14.

^[10]
TSN, May 25, 1989, 11, 20.

^[11]
Ibid., 52.

^[12]
TSN, September 27, 1989, 45; TSN, November 3, 1989, 49.

^[13]
Original Record, 264.

^[14]
TSN, May 25, 1989, 20.

^[15]
Original Record, 267.

^[16]
TSN, September 6, 1989, 20.

^[17]
Exhibit 13 and sub-markings.

^[18]
Original Record, 265.

^[19]
U.S. vs. Sarikala, 37 Phil. 486 (1918).

^[20]
TSN, March 8, 1989, 27.

^[21]
People vs. Caraig, supra.

^[22]
People vs. Ballinas, G.R. No. 93300, October 4, 1991, citing People vs.
Traya, 147 SCRA 381 (1987).

^[23]
Brief for the Appellant, 14; Rollo, 47.

^[24]
People vs. Caraig, supra; People vs. Punzalan, et
al., 153 SCRA 1 (1987).

^[25]
People vs. Nabayra, G.R. No. 96368-69, October 17, 1991.

^[26]
People vs. Young, 83 Phil. 702 (1949); People vs. Resurreccion,
et al., 94 SCRA 96 (1979); People vs. Ruiz, 110 SCRA 155 (1981).

^[27]
People vs. Lanseta, et al., 95 SCRA 166 (1980); People vs. Talay,
et al., 101 SCRA 332 (1980).

^[28]
People vs. Delgado, et al., 77 Phil. 11 (1946).

^[29]
People vs. Bernal, 128 SCRA 606 (1984).

^[30]
Original Record, 268-269.

^[31]
People vs. Undong, 66 SCRA 386 (1975); People vs. Garcia, et al.,
94 SCRA 14 (1979); People vs. Palon, 127 SCRA 529 (1984).