THE UNITED STATES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. AGATON DUNGCA, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

Agaton Dungca, along with several other persons, was arraigned in the Court
of First Instance of Pampanga for having violated section 30, paragraph 4, of
the Election Law, by entering his name as a voter in the voting list of the
municipality of Macabebe and taking the corresponding oath that he was qualified
under the conditions required by that law, when he knew that he was not, thus
succeeding in being registered and in voting in the general elections of the
year 1912.

After trial of all the accused, with the exception of one who was tried
separately, the court acquitted all of them except the defendant Agaton Dungca,
whom he sentenced to a fine of P200, with subsidiary imprisonment at the rate of
one day for each P2.50 unpaid, but with the condition that the imprisonment
could not exceed three months, and to pay one-ninth of the costs. From this
judgment said defendant has appealed.

In one of the two briefs submitted by the defense in this instance it is
maintained that the court violated section 16 of General Orders, No. 58, by
sentencing the defendant without the intervention of his attorneys, one of the
latter having through inexcusable negligence and intentional omission failed to
present evidence in defense of said defendant; and it is requested in said brief
that a new trial be ordered.

From the record it appears that the defendant Dungca and the others indicted
along with him appeared at the trial accompanied by the attorneys E. Gutierrez
David and Aurelio Pineda; that during the trial the first-named attorney
objected on the part of the defendants, without excepting any of them and
therefore including Dungca, to the admission of various documents presented by
the prosecution and to various questions put by it; that, although in putting
the witness Felix Bustos on the stand for the defense and in asking him about
the office each one of the accused had held in the municipality of Macabebe, he
did not do so definitely with reference to the defendant Dungca, the other
attorney, Pineda, made the proposition to the fiscal, which was accepted by him,
to stipulate that the accused, each and all of them, in case they were put on
the stand in their own behalf, would testify that they had held the office of
tenientes, as Felix Bustos had testified, with the exception of Francisco
Sanchez, who was going to testify, as he did in fact testify, as a witness; and
when the court asked each one of the accused, among them Agaton Dungca, whether
the attorney, said Pineda, was authorized to make that stipulation, all of them
answered in the affirmative.

It is not, therefore, true that opportunity was not allowed the defendant
Dungca to prepare his defense in this trial, nor that he was sentenced without
the intervention of attorneys to defend him therein, as is affirmed in said
brief. Neither is it strictly true that he was not defended or, what amounts to
the same thing, that his attorneys did nothing at the trial which would have
tended to defend him, for the stipulation itself proposed by the attorney Pineda
and accepted by the fiscal, in not expressly excluding said defendant, but only
the person named Francisco Sanchez, demonstrates that it was the purpose of said
attorney to present evidence in Dungca’s favor, perhaps under the same
conditions as for the other accused. Consequently, the error assigned in that
respect is groundless.

But, admitting that at the trial the attorneys for the defendant made some
omission, oversight or mistake in submitting and handling the evidence with
respect to said Dungca, or some error in regard to the sufficiency, importance
or consequence of what they ought to have presented in said defendant’s favor,
that would not serve as a basis for a new trial, as this court has declared in
the case of the United States vs. Umali (15 Phil. Rep., 33). It is true
that in the decision cited, this court said that to prevent a manifest
miscarriage of justice in a jurisdiction wherein a wholly new system of judicial
procedure is being implanted, the rigor of the rule might in an exceptional case
be relaxed, this would be done only under very exceptional circumstances, and in
cases where a review of the whole record taken together with the evidence
improvidently omitted would clearly justify the conclusion that the omission had
resulted in the conviction of one innocent of the crime charged. But such are
not the circumstances of the present case, as is demonstrated by the contents of
the other brief presented in defense of the same defendant.

In said brief it is substantially acknowledged that Agaton Dungca has not
been capitan municipal, gobernadorcillo, alcalde, teniente, or cabeza de
barangay, but merely an alguacil, according to the testimony of the witness for
the prosecution Juan de la Cruz (page 14 of the stenographic notes and Exhibit
F, page 31), but it is maintained that as such alguacil he was a member of the
government of the municipality to which he belonged, that is, of Macabebe, and
that he is therefore; according to the defense, included in subsection
(a) of section 13 of the Election Law and qualified to be a voter. In
the presence of such an explicit acknowledgment on the part of counsel for the
defendant in his brief, it is useless to reopen the trial and attempt to prove
that the defendant Agaton Dungca had, previous to August 13, 1898, held any
office other than that of alguacil of the municipal government of Macabebe; and
it only remains to be determined if as such alguacil he was a member of that
municipal government.

The officers composing the municipal governments in the Philippines,
according to the royal decree creating them, dated November 12, 1889, were the
alcalde, teniente de alcalde, sindico, regidores or councilors, and secretaries,
and they were known as members of the municipal government. This classification
was not and could not be given to the alguaciles, as they were merely assistants
or subordinate employees whose business was to discharge mechanical duties in
executing the orders of the municipal government to which they belonged. The
alguacil of a municipal government is, according to the Dictionary of the
Spanish Academy, an inferior officer who executes the commands of the municipal
government or of the alcaldes or tenientes de alcaldes in matters under their
respective control; and the word is defined in the Diccionario de la
Administracion Española by Martin Alcubilla, volume 1, page 445, in these terms:
“The lowest officer in the administrative scale, charged with carrying out the
decrees for policing and good government.” It being very clear that the lowest
officer of a municipal government cannot be regarded as a member of that
municipal government, it is also evident that the defendant Agaton Dungca was
not qualified, as alleged by his defense, to be a voter in accordance with the
provisions of subsection (a), section 13, of the Election Law in
force.

For the reasons set forth, we declare that there is no reason for granting
the new trial requested by one of the attorneys for the defendant Agaton Dungca,
and we affirm the judgment appealed from, with the costs against the
appellant.

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