THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. WILFREDO PAGSANJAN ALIAS WILLY, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.

Wilfredo Pagsanjan (alias
“Willy”), at one time a member of the police force of Valenzuela,
Bulacan, was charged with the crime of murder under an information filed by the
Provincial Fiscal of Bulacan dated February 26, 1987. The information alleged that on January 13, 1987, in Valenzuela,
Metro Manila, Wilfredo, “with abuse of superior strength, treachery and
evident premeditation and with intent to kill ** , did then and there wilfully,
unlawfully and feloniously attack, assault and shoot ** Marcelo M. de Leon with
a firearm thereby inflicting on the latter mortal physical injuries which
directly caused his death.”

Assisted by counsel de parte, Wilfredo entered a plea of not guilty on arraignment and was
thereafter tried. He was convicted by
judgment promulgated on June 22, 1990, which contained the following
dispositive part, to wit:

“WHEREFORE, finding the accused Wilfredo Pagsanjan alias
‘Willy’ guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime charged, the Court hereby
sentences him to suffer the penalty of RECLUSION PERPETUA and to pay the
costs.

The accused is hereby sentenced to pay the heirs of Marcelo de Leon
the sum of P48,000.00 for funeral services, the sum of P144,000.00 for the
burial lot, and another amount of P10,000.00 for expenses during the wake. He is also ordered to indemnify the heirs of
victim the sum of P30,000.00 (People vs. dela Fuente, G.R. No. 62351-52,
December 29, 1983).”

Wilfredo’s counsel moved for reconsideration contending that his
client had been denied due process because by the Trial Court’s refusal to
grant him an extension counted from his receipt of the transcript of
stenographic notes, he had been constrained to prepare and submit the
memorandum in the defendant’s behalf without said transcript of stenographic
notes and “with haste.” He also moved for the Judge’s
inhibition. Both motions were
denied. The Court ruled (a) that
“(m)emorandum is not part of the trial, it is the evidence adduced during
the trial that has to be considered and evaluated by the Court;” and (b)
as regards the motion for inhibition, that since the decision in the case had
already been promulgated, his inhibition would be tantamount to “allowing
a court of equal jurisdiction to review the decision of co-equal court.”

The accused did not thereafter file a notice of appeal. Nevertheless, the records of the case were
transmitted to this Court on instructions of the Trial Court which evidently
entertained the notion that because the accused had been sentenced to reclusion perpetua, he was “entitled to an
automatic appeal to the Honorable Supreme Court.”^[1] The
notion is erroneous.

As this Court has already stressed in other cases,^[2]
the constitutional proscription on the imposition of the death penalty,^[3]
has eliminated the automatic review by the Supreme Court, theretofore existing,
of “cases where the death penalty is imposed.”^[4]
Hence, as the law now stands, in criminal cases, an appeal may be taken to the
Supreme Court from the Regional Trial Court in only one of two ways: (a) the filing of a notice of appeal — in
those cases where the latter imposes the sentence of reclusion perpetua, regardless
of the questions to be raised on appeal, whether purely legal, or legal and
factual;^[5]
or (b) the filing of a petition for review on certiorari under
Rule 45(^[6])
— where the penalty imposed is not reclusion
perpetua, but the appeal
would involve only questions of law.^[7]
It was therefore necessary for the
accused, Wilfredo Pagsanjan, to file a notice of appeal within fifteen
(15) days from promulgation of judgment of conviction to initiate an appeal. Since no such notice of appeal was filed, no
appeal was ever perfected, and it was clearly error for the Trial Court to send
up the records of the case to this Court.

The failure of Pagsanjan or his counsel to file a notice of
appeal within the time appointed should ordinarily have brought about finality
of the verdict of conviction. The Court
is however loath to declare Wilfredo’s right of appeal to have been lost
through the common misapprehension of both his lawyer and the Trial Court. It is not unreasonable to suppose that
Wilfredo was misled by the Court’s statement in its Order of August 2, 1990
that he was “entitled to an automatic appeal to the Honorable Supreme
Court.” There is moreover on record a handwritten letter of Wilfredo dated
March 14, 1991, addressed to former Chief Justice Marcelo B. Fernan,^[8]
in which he proclaims his innocence, puts in serious doubt the sincerity and
quality of the defense put up by his lawyer in his behalf, and contends that he
had been made “a victim of a well-coordinated conspiracy between and among
the police investigators, the Judge, some court employees, and to some extent
the defense lawyer ** .” To the letter, he also attached a typewritten
document containing arguments for his acquittal,^[9] a
copy of which he claims to have submitted to his counsel, “Atty. Ricardo
Valmonte” but which arguments, according to him, were “not included
in ** (the memorandum submitted in his behalf) due to reasons known only to **
(his) lawyer.”^[10]
Under these circumstances, the Court feels that a review of the case, taking
account of all of the appellant’s proffered arguments, would be more consonant
with the ends of justice. That it now
undertakes.

Not unexpectedly, the versions given by the prosecution and the
defense of the material occurrences, are widely divergent. Following is the narration of the facts,
culled from the prosecution’s proofs — consisting of the testimony of (a) the
victim’s wife, Angelina del Rosario de Leon; (b) P/Sgt. Ponciano M. Casili of
the Valenzuela Police Force; (c) Senior Medico-Legal Officer Orlando Salvador,
of the National Bureau of Investigation; (d) P/Sgt. Loreto Rodriguez, and (e) a
former police officer, Avelino Francisco, as well as seven empty shells found
at the scene of the crime, various documents and photographs.

Marcelo de Leon was
living with his wife, Angelina del Rosario, at No. 42 Tamaraw Hills,
Valenzuela. At the time of his death on
January 13, 1987, he was the President and General Manager of their
business known as “Villamaria Subdivision” and a member of various
civic, religious and sports organizations. The spouses owned apartment dwellings which they let out to different
persons. One of these was a 10-door
apartment building at the back of their residence, a unit of which, numbered 6,
was occupied by Carmen Reyes and her “live-in partner” or common-law
husband, Wilfredo Pagsanjan. At the
time of the incident, they had been leasing the place for about ten (10) years.

That 10-door apartment building was in process of undergoing renovation
and repairs on January 13, 1987. Prior
to commencement of the work, the de Leon Spouses had sent written notices for
the vacation of the premises to all the tenants. One such notice was given to Carmen Reyes’ mother, who was also
staying at said Unit No. 6, but who, however, refused to acknowledge receipt
thereof. What the de Leons did was to
verbally reiterate their demand to vacate to Carmen Reyes and her mother. But Carmen refused to leave the place. She simply said she was looking for another
place to transfer. She even rejected
the de Leons’ offer of another apartment dwelling, protesting that the rental
was too high for her considering that her common-law husband, Wilfredo, had
been dismissed from his job as a policeman.

In the morning of that day, January 13, 1987, at around 8:30
o’clock, Angelina de Leon was standing in front of Unit No. 7 of the apartment
building, sweeping the yard and supervising the work being done by the
carpenters. Her husband, Marcelo, was
in the second floor of Unit No. 8, in turn supervising the workers in that
area.

Angelina saw Wilfredo Pagsanjan enter the apartment tenants’ gate
carrying what looked like cardboard box, about one meter long and a foot
wide. He went into Unit No. 6 and
stayed inside for some time. Angelina
also saw her husband, Marcelo, come down from apartment No. 8 and go to
apartment No. 1.

After a while Angelina heard successive gunshots from the place
where her husband had gone. She turned
towards that direction. She saw her
husband, Marcelo, lying on his back on top of a pushcart which happened to be
there, his feet dangling from one end. She also saw Wilfredo Pagsanjan, bent slightly forward, with a long
firearm pointed towards Marcelo. Before
the shooting, she had heard no altercation or exchange of words between
Wilfredo and her husband. Her husband
had no gun or other weapon on his person, and she observed no other individual
with any firearm in that place. Angelina started to run to her husband but was stopped by the carpenters
who brought her inside her home. She
used her radio communications system to
seek help. According to her, her
husband’s death wrought a great change in her life; she was not herself for
much of the time; she became fearful of her life and could not eat nor sleep
not only because of her grief but also because she began to receive calls that
she would be the next victim.

The post-mortem examination disclosed that Marcelo
de Leon died from several gunshot wounds, any one of which was fatal and would
cause death within an hour, and that his wounds were compatible with the number
of empty shells recovered at the scene of the crime.

Police Sergeant Ponciano M. Casili, officer-in-charge of the
Investigation Section of the Valenzuela Police Station, received a telephone
call from a certain Edgar of Tamaraw Hills, Marulas, Valenzuela, advising of a
shooting in the apartment compound of Marcelo de Leon. He forthwith proceeded to the place,
together with his assistant, and the Chief of the Follow-Up Section. They came upon the lifeless body of Marcelo
de Leon on a pushcart, with several gunshot wounds in the face and head. Casili had the body brought to the Fatima
Hospital and then interrogated the persons at the scene. The victim’s wife, Angelina de Leon, was
hysterical and was unable to give a narration of the shooting beyond saying
that she had seen Wilfredo carrying a long object. Casili took down the statements of two of the workers in the
apartment building, Fernando Pangan and Gualberto Rivera, Jr. and had them
sworn to before MTC Judge Serapio. Casili’s companion, Pat. Salonga, took down the statement of another
person, Orlando Caparas, a carpenter. Casili collected seven (7) empty shells of an Armalite M-16 rifle at the
scene of the crime.

Casili later went back to the de Leons’ house but was there
informed by former Barangay Captain Amang de Guzman that Mrs. de Leon could not
be questioned. He then prepared a
“General Alarm Report” for the apprehension of the suspect, Wilfredo
Pagsanjan — a former policeman who had been dismissed for cause from the
police force but had afterwards succeeded in having himself employed in the
Civil Security Unit in the Office of the Mayor, assigned to the Office of the
Chief of the SID (Silid Siyasatan), Valenzuela Police Station, which was the position he was
holding on January 13, 1987.

Casili looked for Wilfredo in several places: at the apartment of his “live-in
partner,” Carmen Reyes; at the police headquarters; at the house of
Wilfredo’s father at Barangay Central and that of his grandmother at Bagbag,
Novaliches; at the house of Wilfredo’s former “live-in partner,”
Erlinda. Wilfredo could not be found in
any of said houses. Other police
officers searched for Wilfredo in the house of his uncle at Sta. Maria,
Bulacan, in that of his mother, at the CID District, as well as in the houses
of some of his known friends at Dama de Noche, Marulas. Wilfredo could not be found in any of said
places either. In fact, Wilfredo was
not seen or heard from from January 13, 1987 until more than two and a half
years later, on July 11, 1989, at which time, accompanied by a certain Atty.
Valenzuela, he surrendered to the authorities.

In its turn, the defense presented two witnesses: Valenzuela Police Lieutenant Francisco
Rodriguez, and Carmencita Reyes.

Lt. Rodriguez identified the telegraphic report and the letter to
the NBI of Sgt. Casili in both of which Casili describes the killer as an
“unidentified” person; this, notwithstanding that he had already
spoken to the victim’s widow, Mrs. de Leon, and the latter had supposedly
identified the assailant as Wilfredo (Willy) Pagsanjan.

For her part, Carmen Reyes, the appellant’s common-law wife,
asserted that Wilfredo was not in the apartment building at all when the
shooting of Marcelo de Leon took place; in fact he had not been to that place
for a week because they had quarreled over Wilfredo’s having slapped her child
by her first husband. She declared that
at the time of the shooting, she was in her apartment taking coffee. She however ignored the shots, and only went
out after two minutes to see what had happened. She heard someone carying out to Mrs. de Leon that her husband
had been shot, and saw Mrs. de Leon attempting to go out of the gate but being
pulled back by her son. She saw Marcelo
de Leon sprawled on a pushcart. When
some police officers arrived, she went back into her apartment. Not long afterwards, P/Lt. Rodriguez knocked
at her door and asked for Wilfredo Pagsanjan so that he could help in the
investigation, Wilfredo being, according to Carmencita, quite experienced or
skilled in this sort of work. She told
Pat. Rodriguez Wilfredo was not in. When Rodriguez seemed skeptical, Carmencita even asked him to search her
house, which Rodriguez did, together with Sgt. Casili. Carmencita saw Wilfredo a month after the
incident at his house in Meycauayan and told him he was a suspect in the
killing of Marcelo de Leon, and although the latter wished to surrender himself
at the time, he was advised against doing so by a certain Pat. Mario
Capangyarihan because Mrs. de Leon had allegedly paid someone P150,000.00 to
kill him.

Wilfredo Pagsanjan did
not choose to testify in his behalf.

In this Court, appellant Pagsanjan prays for reversal of the
verdict against him, ascribing the following errors to the Trial Court, to wit:

1)      in failing to consider
his memorandum prior to promulgating judgment of conviction;

2)      in accepting the
prosecution’s version of the facts and rejecting appellant’s; and

3)      in convicting him of
murder instead of homicide only, and failing to appreciate in his favor the
mitigating circumstance of voluntary surrender.

After a meticulous review of the record, this Court is
constrained to agree with the Trial Court’s assessment of the evidence, and to hold that the appellant’s
guilt of the crime charged has indeed been established by proof beyond
reasonable doubt.

Pagsanjan was positively
identified by the victim’s widow, Angelina de Leon, as the person who had
passed through the gate of the apartments’ tenants, bearing what seemed to be a
cardboard box and had gone into into Unit No. 6 where he stayed for a
while. He was also identified by Ms. de
Leon as the man who, after successive gunshots had rung out, had a long firearm
pointed towards her husband then lying on his back on top of a pushcart. The evidence also establishes that Pagsanjan
had in fact been residing in one of the de Leons’ apartments, leased by his
common-law wife, Carmen Reyes; that Carmen had refused to vacate her unit
despite having been asked to do so by the de Leons, circumstances which led the
Trial Court to opine that “the motive of appellant in killing the victim
was to get even with the latter for ejecting his live-in partner.”^[11]

There, too, is the intriguing fact of Pagsanjan’s flight from the
scene of the crime and disappearance from his usual residence and haunts for
some two and a half (2 1/2) years. Considering that he was once a police officer himself — and at the time
of the shooting was employed in the Civil Security Unit in the Office of the
Mayor, assigned to the Office of the Chief of the SID (Silid Siyasatan), Valenzuela Police Station — and
therefore well acquainted, perhaps even on intimate or close terms, with some
of the other policemen investigating the case, as well generally as with other
people involved in law enforcement, his hiding himself for such a long period
of time makes no sense unless it be in the context of his inability to
exculpate himself.

Appellant Pagsanjan never having taken the witness stand, no
direct confutation or personal explanation on his part of the foregoing
circumstances is thus found in the record, which circumstances, taken together,
irresistibly point to his having killed Marcelo de Leon.

However, the Trial Court’s ruling that the qualifying
circumstance of treachery should be appreciated against appellant Pagsanjan
cannot be accepted. No one, not even
Ms. Angelina de Leon, the lone eyewitness, saw the actual shooting by the
appellant of Marcelo de Leon. Ms. de
Leon’s testimony is that after hearing several shots, she saw her husband lying
on his back on a pushcart and the appellant leaning forward with a rifle
pointed towards Marcelo de Leon. She
did not see what transpired immediately before
the shooting. It does not therefore
seem possible to this Court to draw the conclusion that appellant Pagsanjan
shot his victim suddenly and without warning, without according the latter any
opportunity to make any defense against the assault on his person, thus
ensuring the commission of the crime without risk to the offender.

Neither does it seem possible to appreciate, as the Trial Court
did, the aggravating circumstance of evident premeditation against
Pagsanjan. There is no evidence of when
Pagsanjan was made aware of the de Leons’ intentions to evict the former’s
paramour from her apartment — which allegedly caused resentment in the
appellant and gave rise to a motive for the killing — thus making it
impossible to determine if sufficient time had elapsed between the acquisition
of that knowledge and the actual killing for the accused to meditate and
reflect on his intent and to desist therefrom.^[12]

What all the foregoing imports is that in the state of the
evidence it is possible to find appellant Pagsanjan guilty only of the crime of
homicide, without the attendance of aggravating or mitigating
circumstance. The mitigating
circumstance of voluntary surrender cannot, as appellant pleads, be considered in
his favor. He did not surrender voluntarily. It took two (2) years and five (5) months
after the issuance of warrant of arrest against him, before he
surrendered. If he finally gave himself
up, it was not to save the State the time and effort of searching for him, but
because he had gotten tired of the life of a fugitive, or seen no other
reasonable alternative to continued absence from his home and constant evasion
of police officers.

Pagsanjan’s claim that the Trial Court proceeded to assess the
evidence and render judgment without giving his counsel sufficient time to read
the transcripts of stenographic notes, said counsel having been thus
constrained to file a “hastily prepared” memorandum, did not result
in substantial injury to his rights in the premises.

This Court declines to declare erroneous the Trial Court’s ruling
(a) that a “(m)emorandum is not part of the trial, it is the evidence
adduced during the trial that has to be considered and evaluated by the
Court;” and (b) as regards the motion for inhibition, that since the
decision in the case had already been promulgated, his inhibition would be
tantamount to “allowing a court of equal jurisdiction to review the
decision of co-equal court.” As to appellant’s claim of irregularity of
conduct by his counsel in his defense, he may if he wishes file the approprate
administrative complaint against the lawyer; in any case, the points he claims
were ignored by his counsel, have been considered by this Court in the
resolution of his appeal.

In fine, the decision of
the Court a quo in so far as it rules
that the evidence establishes beyond reasonable doubt that appellant Pagsanjan
did indeed shoot and kill Marcelo de Leon and that the killing caused damages
to the latter’s widow in the amounts set out in the judgment, must be affirmed. The crime committed however is homicide, not
murder. The indemnity required to be
paid by the appellant to his victim’s
heirs must be increased to P50,000.00 conformably to standing case law.

WHEREFORE, the appellant Wilfredo Pagsanjan @
“Willy” is found GUILTY beyond reasonable doubt of the felony of
homicide and, there being neither aggravating nor mitigating circumstances, is
hereby SENTENCED to suffer the indeterminate penalty of seventeen (17) years
and four (4) months of reclusion temporal, as maximum, ten (10) years of prision mayor, as minimum; to pay the heirs of the victim, de Leon damages of
the character and in the amounts set out in the judgment of the Trial Court, viz.: “P48,000.00 for funeral services, * *
P144,000.00 for the burial lot, and * * P10,000.00 for expenses during the
wake,” as well as the sum of P50,000.00 as indemnity for death.

SO ORDERED.

Padilla, Regalado, and
Nocon, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Rollo, p. 110: Order, August 2,
1990

^[2]
SEE Anacleto Murillo v. Rodolfo Consul, UDK-9748, March 1, 1990, 183 SCRA,
pp. xi to xviii, and cases therein cited; SEE also,
Circular No. 2-90 dated March 9, 1990 issued on the basis of Murillo

^[3]
SEC. 19 (1), ART. III, 1987 Constitution, pertinently reading: ” ** Neither shall death penalty be
imposed, unless, for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes, the Congress
hereafter provides for it. Any death
penalty already imposed shall be reduced to reclusion
perpetua.”

^[4]
Sec. 3 (e), in relation to Sec. 10, Rule 122, Rules of Court, as amended

^[5]
Sec. 3 (a) and (c), Rule 122, Rules of Court, in relation to SEC. 5 (2) (d),
ART. VIII of the 1987 Constitution decreeing that the Supreme Court has
exclusive jurisdiction to “(r)eview, revise, reverse, modify, or affirm on
appeal or certiorari, as the law or the Rules of Court may provide, final
judgments and orders of lower courts in (among others) ** (a)ll criminal cases
in which the penalty imposed is reclusion
perpetua or higher.”

^[6]
SEC. 3 (d), Rule 122, Rules of Court

^[7]
SEC. 5 (2) (e), ART. VIII of the Constitution — “All cases in which only
an error or question of law is involved.” N.B. If the appeal would
raise issues of fact, the appeal should be to the Court of Appeals, as also, if
the case has been decided by the
Regional Trial Court in the exercise of its appellate jurisdiction over cases
appealed from Municipal Trial Courts (in municipalities, cities or circuits),
in which event the appeal would be, not by mere notice of appeal, but by the
filing of a petition for review.

^[8]
Rollo, pp. 56-59

^[9]
Id., pp. 93-99

^[10]
Id., p. 99

^[11]
Rollo, p. 146

^[12]
SEE Aquino, The Revised Penal Code, 1976 ed., Vol. 1, pp. 326 et seq.