THE UNITED STATES, PLAINTIFF AND APPELLEE, VS. LEANDRO DE VERA, DEFENDANT AND APPELLANT.

Leandro de Vera was charged with the crime of illegal marriage, because,
according to the complaint, while legally married to Modesta Lamadrid he
contracted a second marriage with Guadalupe Samarita, on or about the 21st of
June, 1913, in the pueblo of Gasan, Province of Tayabas, and before his previous
marriage had been legally dissolved.

Judgment was rendered in the case by the Court of First Instance of Tayabas,
on February 12 of the present year, whereby defendant was sentenced, under the
charge aforesaid, to the penalty of eight years and one day of prision
mayor, to the accessory penalties, and to the payment of the costs. From
this judgment defendant has appealed.

The only important question in controversy in this case, according to
defendant’s counsel, is the following: Did the defendant, Leandro de Vera,
contract marriage with Modesta Lamadrid in Indan, Ambos Camarines, before
marrying Guadalupe Samarita on June 21,1913?

Defendant’s counsel answers this question in the negative and in support of
his contention alleges that the lower court erred, first, in admitting in
evidence a certain entry made on page 127 of the marriage register of the parish
of Indan, Ambos Camarines, dated January 7, 1907, and the alleged copy of the
said entry, Exhibit A of the prosecution; second, in finding that on the said
date, January 7, 1907, defendant, Leandro de Vera, was united in marriage to the
said Modesta Lamadrid.

The introduction by the prosecution, at the trial, of the entry in the said
marriage register as proof of the fact that Leandro de Vera had contracted
marriage, in accordance with the ritual of the Catholic Church, with Modesta
Lamadrid, in Indan, Ambos Camarines, on January 7, 1907, was effected through
Father Salomon Balani, the parish priest of the church in the a forementioned
pueblo, who, in such capacity, was charged with the custody and preservation of
the books of the said parish. On this occasion Father Balani personally examined
the said entry or record and showed it to the court, as well as the page where
Father Mariano Bamba had recorded and where there appeared an entry of the
solemnization of the said marriage before the acting parish priest of the said
pueblo, on the date aforementioned, January 7, 1907, after compliance with the
requirements and formalities imposed by the Catholic ritual. At the foot of this
entry there appears Father Bamba’s signature, identified by the witness, Father
Balani, as being that of his predecessor in that parish, who, he testified,
married the contracting parties, or, which amounts to the same thing, had
solemnized the said marriage. As the book wherein the said entry or record was
made was necessarily required for use by the parish of Indan, and as the
prosecution had requested to be permitted to attach to the records of the case a
certified copy of the said entry in place of the original, the court granted the
petition and the copy presented was marked as Exhibit A of the prosecution. The
defendant did not assail the authenticity of the said original entry nor that of
the book which contained it, nor did he object to the inclusion of the said
certified copy among the records of the case, but merely objected to the
presentation of the aforementioned original entry, though he took no exception
to its admission.

It is true that section 20 of the Municipal Code, invoked by the defense,
prescribes among the duties of the municipal secretaries that of keeping a civil
register in which they must record all the marriages that take place in their
respective municipalities, and that of issuing certificates of documents under
their charge; it further provides, in connection with preceding clauses, that
every person residing within the limits of the municipality who is authorized by
law to celebrate marriages shall immediately forward to the municipal secretary
a notification of every marriage which he celebrates. It is likewise true that
section 7 of General Orders No. 68 also prescribes that the person solemnizing a
marriage must draw up and sign a certificate containing a record of the same and
transmit a copy of such certificate to the justice of the peace court. However,
these provisions have not deprived the priests and ministers of the gospel of
any religion and other persons authorized by section 5 of the same general
orders, amended by General Orders No. 70, of the right nor have they been
exempted from the duty of keeping registry or record books of the marriages
solemnized by them, or issuing certificates of such data, with respect to these
acts, as may appear in their respective registers; nor do such provisions
prescribe that only, certificates of marriages recorded by municipal
secretaries, in the registers of their respective municipalities and issued by
them shall authenticate or be evidence of such facts in such wise that no other
proof of those provided for by law may be presented or admitted at trial, when,
through the omission or fault either of the municipal secretary himself or of
the person who solemnized the marriage, it was not entered or recorded in the
register to which these provisions refer.

Civil marriage is not the only form established in these Islands, for, as
aforesaid, priests or ministers of the gospel of any religion are empowered to
solemnize marriages, according to the laws now in force. This power implies that
they may keep registers of the marriages celebrated by them and issue
certificates therefrom. On the other hand, no record can be made in the civil
register of municipal secretaries but of the marriages reported to them by those
who solemnized them, so that the certificates issued by the said officials
attest the entry of marriages so reported to them in the book used for the
purpose. This registration or formality may sometimes be omitted by the person
charged therewith, thus rendering it impossible for the municipal secretary to
issue a. certificate of the marriage. There is, therefore, no reason whatever
why, in the absence of such a certificate, as occurs in the case at bar, the
best proof of the solemnization of the marriage should not be the entry or
record made in the book kept for the purpose by the priest or minister who
solemnized it, or the certificate, issued in due form by a competent person, of
such entry or record, in place of the certificate which the municipal secretary
could have issued if the marriage had been recorded in the register under his
charge, in conformity with the provisions of the said section 20 of the
Municipal Code invoked by defendant’s counsel.

Bishop, in his work on Marriage, Divorce and Separation, (vol. 1, par. 1009),
says: “The statutes of many of our States make it the duty of those to whom the
solemnization of marriage is entrusted to keep a record of their marriages, and
transmit lists of them from time to time to a general recording officer, to be
by the latter recorded. Since, therefore, the first record is made and kept, in
pursuance of law, by one who as to marriage solemnization is a public officer,
no reason appears why it, or his certificate of its contents, should not be just
as good in evidence as the general record, or the certificate thereof.”

Moreover, as the marriage register wherein, appears the record of the
marriage alleged to have been solemnized between Leandro de Vera and Modesta
Lamadrid in the pueblo of Indan, Ambos Camarines, on January 7, 1907, does not
belong to Father Mariano Bamba, who, according to that entry, solemnized the
said marriage and by whom, as the parish priest of the said pueblo, the said
entry appears to have been signed, but belongs to the Roman Catholic Church,
which is a juridical entity (Barlin vs. Ramirez, 7 Phil. Rep., 41), and
of which Father Bamba was then the representative in the said pueblo, the
introduction of the said entry as well as of the book containing it, by Father
Salomon Balani, the parish priest of the said pueblo and successor of the said
Father Bamba on the date of the trial, and his-testimony with respect to the
authenticity of the document and the truth of the facts therein set forth,
produce the same effects as if such presentation had been made and such
testimony had been given by the said Father Mariano Bamba, inasmuch as they
relate to an act performed by a representative of that juridical entity in the
exercise of his ecclesiastical duties and recorded in a book of the said entity
during the course of its business.

In the case of Blackburn vs. Crawford’s Lessee (3 Wall., 175), where
the appellant objected to the admission in evidence of an entry made in a
baptismal register because the minister or priest who had made the said entry
was still living and was within reach or could be called and should have been
examined with regard to the point at issue, the court said:

“They (the appellants) proved that the book was the baptismal register of St.
Patrick’s Church, in the city of Washington; that the ritual and usage of the
church required such a register to be kept, and baptisms to be entered in it;
and that this entry was in the handwriting of the Rev. John P. Donelan, who, at
this date, was assistant pastor of the church. The plaintiff in error objected
to the evidence as inadmissible for any purpose. If admitted, he claimed that it
was competent to prove only the fact and date of the baptism. The court
overruled both objections and admitted the entry as evidence, ‘as well of the
fact of the said baptism, and of the date thereof, as of the fact that the said
George T. Crawford was baptized as the lawful child of Thomas B. Crawford and
Elizabeth Taylor, his wife.’

“The register was admissible upon the ground that the entries in it were made
by the writer in the ordinary course of his business.”

Bishop, in his aforecited work (vol. 1, par. 1013), added with reference to
the decision above mentioned: “The same rule, it was deemed, would be equally
applicable to records kept, pursuant to ecclesiastical rule, within any other
religious denomination.”

In another case, that of Kennedy vs. Doyle (92 Mass., 161), where the priest
who made the entry of the baptism in the proper register had already died when
the said entry was presented as evidence, the court said: “The entry of a
baptism, contemporaneously made by a Roman Catholic priest, in the discharge of
his ecclesiastical duty, in his church records of baptisms, is competent
evidence after his death, of the date of the baptism, if the book is produced
from the proper custody; although he was not a sworn officer, and the record was
not by law required to be kept.”

Lastly, in the case of Jacobi vs. Order of Germania (26 N. Y. Sup.,
318), where an attempt was made to present a baptismal certificate to prove the
age of the person interested in the suit, the court said: “These certificates
were proven to have been written in the official records of the church books of
Katzhutte, principality of Schwarzburg Rudolstadt. This record is kept by
direction of the supervisor of schools and churches, and was kept by the pastor
of the parish, and has been kept from time immemorial. At the date of the
records a Mr. Kuhne was pastor, and the records are in his handwriting. The
books were delivered by him to the successor as pastor of the parish, the
Reverend M. Huke, who testifies to the truth of the record, and to the copies
from it. The certificates of baptism of the children of the plaintiff, including
the deceased son, were made by the pastors Ortloff and Toupell, and are without
change or erasure, and are admitted to be true copies, and admissible if the
original record be legal evidence. We think the certificates should have been
received. If a record is of a public nature, such as this of a church, an
examined copy of the entries relied on without production of the original is
admissible.”

In the case at bar the book or register of marriages which the prosecution
presented at the trial, through Father Salomon Balani, and in which, on page 127
thereof, is found the entry or record of the marriage In question, is the sixth
one of its kind of the Roman Catholic parish of Indan, Ambos Camarines. It was
opened on June 11, 1899, was authorized by the bishop of the diocese of the same
church, was kept in the archives of the said parish and records were therein
made in conformity with the rules and precepts of the Roman Catholic religion.
The entry in question was made and signed by the then parish priest of the
pueblo, Father Mariano Bamba, on the same date on which the marriage referred to
was celebrated, in the course and fulfillment of his ecclesiastical duties, in
accordance with the ritual and usages of the said Roman Catholic Church and in
connection with the duties imposed upon persons authorized to solemnize
marriages, pursuant to the provisions of the aforementioned General Orders No.
68, and in due compliance with such duty. The copy introduced at the trial, in
substitution of the said entry, is a literal one and was issued and certified by
Father Salomon Balani, parish priest of the said pueblo of Indan, successor of
Father Mariano Bamba who solemnized the said marriage, and charged in his
capacity of parish priest with the custody of the books kept in the archives of
the parish, and also of the parish seal. Father Salomon Balani was present at
the trial when the prosecution requested that the said copy be attached as
evidence to the record of the case, in place of its original which, as
aforesaid, was then and there presented with the book that contained it; and the
defendant made no objection to that request, but merely to the introduction of
the original entry or record shown in the said book.

Taking into account, then, the provisions of the existing laws on marriaga,
contained in General Orders Nos. 68 and 70 and in the Municipal Code, previously
mentioned, as well as the doctrine established in the decisions hereinabove
cited, which latter refer to baptismal registers, although they are applicable
to the case at bar on account of the similarity between such registers and those
of marriages, a doctrine that should be accepted and applied in the courts of
these Islands, in view of the present character of the institution of marriage
under the said general orders, which differs from that which it possessed under
the previous system of legislation; and duly considering the several forms of
marriage authorized by the same general orders, in connection with the
formalities established by the said new legislation for the purpose of recording
marriages in a general register, provided for in an incomplete and deficient
manner even by those provisions, there can be no doubt whatever that the entry
of a record contained in the said register of the Roman Catholic parish of
Indan, Ambos Camarines, and which records the marriage contracted by Leandro de
Vera and Modesta Lamadrid on January 7, 1907, before Father Mariano Bamba, is
competent evidence of the said fact, and the trial court incurred no error
whatever by admitting it as such and likewise, in substitution of the original
of the said entry or record, the certified copy of the same, issued by Father
Salomon Balani, Exhibit A of the prosecution.

Though the said document constitutes full proof of the facts therein set
forth, the defense has alleged, nevertheless, that the Leandro de Vera mentioned
in this document, Exhibit A, is not the same accused referred to in. Exhibit B
of the prosecution, or, in other words, that he is not the same man who
contracted marriage with Guadalupe Samarita in Gasan, Tayabas, on June 21, 1913,
because in the first exhibit reference is made to one Leandro de Vera who on
that date was a bachelor, while in the second exhibit, marked B, it is stated
that the person who was united in marriage to Guadalupe Samarita was a widower,
and the defendant, according to his testimony at the trial, contracted his first
marriage with one named Ana Lirag, in 1894, in the parish of Binondo, and, after
her death in 1904, married the aforesaid Guadalupe Samarita, on June 21, 1913,
in the pueblo of Gasan.

In the first place, the defendant himself
testified on the witness stand that about the year 1906, that is, two years
after he became a widower, according to his statement, through the death of his
first w,ife, Ana Lirag, and while he was in Indan, Ambos Camarines, he separated
from a woman named Romana Sureta, with whom he had been living, on account of
some trouble he had with her, and then united conjugally with Modesta Lamadrid,
whom he intended to marry, so much so that he even solicited from the bishop of
Nueva Caceres a dispensation of the marriage bans, which was delivered to the
said Modesta, and that they thereupon decided to get married the following year;
but that witness, having found that Modesta was unfaithful to him, separated
from her and, leaving Indan, went to Gasan, where he married Guadalupe Samarita.
So that, by the defendant’s own statements, it appears that he was in Indan,
Ambos Camarines, after the death as related by him of his first wife, Ana Lirag,
and that while he was in the said pueblo he united conjugally with Modesta
Lamadrid, although he said that he did not contract marriage with her.

In the second place, Father Salomon Balani, the parish priest of Indan,
pointed out the defendant at the trial as being the same Leandro de Vera whom he
had known since they had been in Talisay, in the above-mentioned province, in
1902 or 1903, and stated that he knew that this man was married and that he was
also personally acquainted with His wife, Modesta Lamadrid, and that the last
time that witness had seen her was when he was about to leave Indan, on January
30 of the present year, to appear and testify in this case, on which occasion
this same Modesta Lamadrid was in his convent with the sheriff who there
subpoenaed her and to whom she then said that she was willing to appear in
court, but that she lacked the means wherewith to defray the cost of the
trip.

Finally, both from the certificate issued by the justice of the peace of the
municipality of Gasan, Tayabas, on June21, 1913, Exhibit B of the prosecution,
relative to the marriage contracted before him on the same date by Leandro de
Vera with Guadalupe Samarita, and from the certified copy, Exhibit A of the
prosecution, issued by the parish priest Father Salomon Balani on December 23,
1913, concerning the marriage contracted by Leandro de Vera with Modesta
Lamadrid in the church of the pueblo of Indan, Ambos Camarines, on June 7, 1907,
it appears that the parents of the said Leandro de Vera are Gaspar de Vera and
Lorenza Aguilar. So that it has been clearly proved that the same man who in
June, 1907, was married to Modesta Lamadrid, in Indan, Ambos Camarines, was the
one who afterwards, in June, 1913, contracted marriage with Guadalupe Samarita,
in Gasan, Tayabas, and that this man was no other than the defendant in this
case, Leandro de Vera. Moreover, it was disclosed by means of these two
documents that the defendant, if it was true that, in 1904, he had become a
widower by the death of Ana Lirag, pretended to be a bachelor at the time of his
marriage with Modesta Lamadrid in 1907 and afterwards pretended to be a widower,
while the said Modesta Lamadrid was still living, on his marrying Guadalupe
Samarita in 1913, which statements, as we have seen, were” made by him for the
purpose of alleging at the trial that he was not the same Leandro de Vera who
had married Modesta Lamadrid, because he was a widower through the death of his
first wife, Ana Lirag, when he married Guadalupe Samarita.

Consequently, the trial court has incurred no error by holding it to have
been proved that on January 7, 1907, the defendant, Leandro de Vera, was united
in marriage to Modesta Lamadrid, and that, while lawfully married to her and
without this marriage having been legally dissolved, he contracted a new
marriage with Guadalupe Samarita on June 21, 1913.

The defendant being guilty of the crime of illegal marriage, provided for and
punished by article 471 of the Penal Code, with no modifying circumstance to
consider in the commission of the said crime, the penalty imposed upon him by
the lower court, such as it is in the medium degree, with the accessories of the
law that are mentioned in the judgment appealed from, is proper.

We therefore affirm the said judgment, with the costs against the
appellant.

Arellano, C. J., Torres and Johnson, JJ., concur.

Carson, J., concurs in the result.

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MORELAND, J.

I agree in general with the decision. I hesitate, however, to call a
certificate of marriage the “best” evidence of the marriage.