EN BANC

[G.R. No. 42607. September 28, 1935.]

THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, plaintiff-appellee,

vs. JUAN QUIANZON, defendant-appellant.

Pedro B. Pobre for appellant.

Solicitor-General Hilado for appellee.

SYLLABUS

1. CRIMINAL LAW; HOMICIDE; STATEMENT OF THE VICTIM AND

ADMISSION OF THE ACCUSED, AS PART OF THE "RES GESTÆ". — The victim's
statement immediately after receiving the wound, naming the accused as
the author of the aggression, and the admission forthwith made by the
accused that he had applied a firebrand to A's neck and had wounded him,
besides, with a bamboo spit, are competent evidence in law, admissible as a
part of the res gestæ (sections 279 and 298, No. 7, of the Code of Civil
Procedure; U. S. vs. Macuti, 26 Phil., 170; People vs. Portento and Portento,
48 Phil., 971).
2. ID.; ID.; EXTRAJUDICIAL CONFESSION. — Inasmuch as the
extrajudicial confession of the accused to the barrio lieutenant and later to
the chief of police, in the same afternoon of the crime, that he was the
author of A's wound and that he had inflicted it by means of a bamboo spit,
is strongly corroborated and appears to have been made by the accused
freely and voluntarily, it constitutes evidence against him relative to his
liability as author of the crime charged. (U. S. vs. So Fo, 23 Phil., 379; People
vs. Cabrera, 43 Phil., 64, 82; U. S. vs. Jamino, 3 P. R. A., 52.)
3. ID.; ID.; ACT OF VICTIM WHICH HAS CONTRIBUTED TO
ACCELERATE HIS DEATH DOES NOT RELIEVE ACCUSED OF LIABILITY. —
Where it does not appear that the victim, in removing the drainage from his
wound, had acted voluntarily and with the knowledge that he was
performing an act prejudicial to his health, as this should be attributed to his
pathological condition and to his state of nervousness and restlessness on
account of the physical pain caused by the peritonitis from which he was
suffering, such act of the victim does not have the effect of altering the
natural juridical consequences of the punishable act of the accused (Decision
of the Supreme Court of Spain of April 3, 1879; People vs. Almonte, 56 Phil.,
54; 13 R. C. L., 751), all the more because, as the defense itself claims, the
victim was mentally deranged.

DECISION

CD Technologies Asia, Inc. © 2021 cdasiaonline.com

 RECTO, J : p

Charged with and convicted of the crime of homicide in the Court of

First Instance of Ilocos Norte, and sentenced to an indeterminate penalty of
from six years and one day of prision mayor, as minimum to fourteen years,
seven months and one day of reclusion temporal, as maximum, Juan
Quianzon appeals to this court for the review of the case.

On February 1, 1934, a novena for the suffrage of the soul of a

deceased person was being held in the house of Victorina Cacpal in a barrio,
near the poblacion, of the municipality of Paoay, Ilocos Norte, with the usual
attendance of relatives and friends. The incident that led to the filing of
these charges took place between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Andres
Aribuabo, one of the persons present, went to ask for food of Juan Quianzon,
then in the kitchen, who, to all appearances, had the victuals in his care.
Aribuabo was a sexagenarian and so was Quianzon. It was the second or
third time that Aribuabo approached Quianzon with the same purpose
whereupon the latter, greatly peeved, took hold of a firebrand and applied it
to the neck of the man who so pestered him. Aribuabo ran to the place
where the people were gathered exclaiming that he was wounded and was
dying. Raising his shirt, he showed to those present a wound in his abdomen
below the navel. Aribuabo died as a result of this wound on the tenth day
after the incident.
There is no conflict between the prosecution and the defense as
regards the foregoing facts. The question to be determined is who wounded
Aribuabo. The prosecution claims that it was Juan Quianzon and, to prove it,
called Simeon Cacpal, Roman Bagabay, Gregorio Dumlao and Julian Llaguno
to the witness stand.
The first witness, Simeon Cacpal, claims to have witnessed the
wounding of Andres Aribuabo in the abdomen by Juan Quianzon. However,
we find the testimony of this witness so improbable, incongruent and
contradictory that we consider meritorious the claim of the defense that it
was an error of the lower court to have taken it into consideration in
formulating the findings of its judgment. Not so with respect to the testimony
of the other witnesses. Roman Bagabay, one of the persons present at said
gathering, testified that he saw Juan Quianzon apply a firebrand to the neck
of Andres Aribuabo who shortly afterwards went toward the place where the
witness and the other guests were gathered, telling that he was wounded
and was going to die and naming Juan Quianzon as the person who wounded
him. He also testified that Juan Quianzon, upon being asked immediately by
him about the incident, admitted to him having attacked Aribuabo with a
bamboo spit. Gregorio Dumlao, a barrio lieutenant, who, upon being
informed of the incident, forthwith conducted an investigation, questioned
Aribuabo and the latter told him that it was the accused who had wounded
him. He likewise questioned the accused and the latter, in turn, stated that
he had wounded the deceased with a bamboo spit. Upon being brought
before Julian Llaguno, chief of police of Paoay, for questioning, Quianzon
confessed to Llaguno that he had applied a firebrand to Aribuabo's neck and
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. © 2021 cdasiaonline.com
 had later wounded him with a bamboo spit. Before the chief of police could
put this confession of Quianzon in writing, the latter retracted, denying that
he had wounded Aribuabo, for which reason in the affidavit Exhibit B the fact
of having applied a firebrand to Aribuabo's neck appears admitted by
Quianzon but not that of having wounded the deceased with a bamboo spit.
The disinterestedness of these witnesses for the prosecution, Bagabay,
Dumlao and Llaguno, is not questioned by the defense. Neither the accused,
in his testimony, nor his counsel, in the brief filed by him in this court, was
able to assign any unlawful, corrupt or wicked motive that might have
actuated them to testify falsely in this case and knowingly bring about the
imprisonment of an innocent person. Bagabay is not even a relative of the
deceased. Dumlao, the barrio lieutenant, is a nephew of the accused.
Llaguno, chief of police of Paoay, is an officer of the law whose intervention
in this case was purely in compliance with his official duties. All the appellant
has been able to state in his brief to question the credibility of these
witnesses is that they were contradicted by Simeon Cacpal, the other
witness for the prosecution, who testified that he had not seen them speak
neither to Aribuabo nor to Quianzon in the afternoon of the crime. But the
position of the defense in invoking Simeon Cacpal's testimony for the
purpose of discrediting the other witnesses for the prosecution is untenable,
after having vigorously impeached said testimony, branding it as
improbable, incongruent and contradictory. If Cacpal is a false witness — and
the court believes this claim of the defense as true -, none of his statements
may be taken into account or should exert any influence in the consideration
of the other evidence in the case.
After discarding the testimony of Simeon Cacpal, the evidence
presented by the prosecution relative to the appellant's criminal liability for
the death of Andres Aribuabo, briefly consists, first, in the victim's statement
immediately after receiving the wound, naming the accused as the author of
the aggression, and the admission forthwith made by the accused that he
had applied a firebrand to Aribuabo's neck and had wounded him, besides,
with a bamboo spit. Both statements are competent evidence in law,
admissible as a part of the res gestæ (sections 279 and 298, No. 7, of the
Code of Civil Procedure; U. S. vs. Macuti, 26 Phil., 170; People vs. Portento
and Portento, 48 Phil., 971). Second, in the extrajudicial confession of the
accused to the barrio lieutenant, Dumlao, and later to the chief of police
Llaguno, in the same afternoon of the crime, that he was the author of
Aribuabo's wound and that he had inflicted it by means of a bamboo spit.
Inasmuch as this confession, although extrajudicial, is strongly corroborated
and appears to have been made by the accused freely and voluntarily, it
constitutes evidence against him relative to his liability as author of the
crime charged (U. S. vs. So Fo, 23 Phil., 379; People vs. Cabrera, 43 Phil., 64,
82; U. S. vs. Jamino, 3 P. R. A., 52; Francisco's Quizzer on Evidence).
The defense of the accused consisted simply in denying that he had
wounded the deceased and that he had confessed his guilt to the witnesses
Bagabay, Dumlao and Llaguno. But such denial cannot prevail against the
adverse testimony of these three veracious and disinterested witnesses, all
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. © 2021 cdasiaonline.com
 the more because neither the accused nor any other witness for the defense
has stated or insinuated that another person, not the accused, might be the
author of the wound which resulted in Aribuabo's death, and because it is
admitted by the defense that it was the accused, whom Aribuabo had been
pestering with request for food, who attacked the latter, burning his neck
with a firebrand, after which Aribuabo appeared wounded in the abdomen,
without the accused and the witnesses for the defense explaining how and
by whom the aggression had been made.
It is contended by the defense that even granting that it was the
accused who inflicted the wound which resulted in Aribuabo's death, he
should not be convicted of homicide but only of serious physical injuries
because said wound was not necessarily fatal and the deceased would have
survived it had he not twice removed the drainage which Dr. Mendoza had
placed to control or isolate the infection. This contention is without merit.
According to the physician who examined and attended him, the "wound of
the deceased was very serious and it was difficult to determine whether he
could survive or not." It was a wound in the abdomen which occasionally
results in traumatic peritonitis. The infection was caused by the fecal matter
from the large intestine which had been perforated. The possibility, admitted
by said physician, that the patient might have survived said wound had he
not removed the drainage, does not mean that that act of the patient was
the real cause of his death. Even without said act the fatal consequence
could have followed, and the fact that the patient had so acted in a
paroxysm of pain does not alter the juridical consequences of the punishable
act of the accused.
"One who inflicts an injury on another is deemed by the law to be guilty
of homicide if the injury contributes mediately or immediately to the death of
such other. The fact that other causes contribute to the death does not
relieve the actor of responsibility. . . ." (13 R. C. L., 748.)
Furthermore, it does not appear that the patient, in removing the
drainage, had acted voluntarily and with the knowledge that he was
performing an act prejudicial to his health, inasmuch as self- preservation is
the strongest instinct in living beings. It must be assumed, therefore, that he
unconsciously did so due to his pathological condition and to his state of
nervousness and restlessness on account of the horrible physical pain
caused by the wound, aggravated by the contact of the drainage tube with
the inflamed peritoneum. "When the peritonitis is due to traumatism, or to a
perforation of the stomach, intestine, or gall-bladder, etc., it is indicated by
violent shivering and pain first localized at a point in the abdomen,
extending later to the entire abdominal wall; acute intolerable pain, which is
aggravated by the slightest movement, becoming unbearable upon contact
with the hand, a rag, or the bedclothes. The pain is continuous but it gives
frequent paroxysms. The abdomen is swollen, tense. Vomitings of greenish
matter, which are very annoying and terribly painful, take place from the
beginning and continue while the disease lasts." (XVI Spanish-American
Encyclopædic Dictionary, 175; see also XXI Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911
ed., 171.) If to this is added the fact that the victim in this case was mentally
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. © 2021 cdasiaonline.com
 deranged, according to the defense itself, it becomes more evident that the
accused is wrong in imputing the natural consequences of his criminal act to
an act of his victim.
The question herein raised by the appellant has already been finally
settled by jurisprudence. The Supreme Court of Spain, in a decision of April
3, 1879, said in a case similar to the present, the following: "Inasmuch as a
man is responsible for the consequences of his act — and in this case the
physical condition and temperament of the offended party nowise lessen the
evil, the seriousness whereof is to be judged, not by the violence of the
means employed, but by the result actually produced; and as the wound
cause which determined his death, without his being able to counteract its
effects, it is evident that the act in question should be qualified as homicide,
etc."
In the case of People vs. Almonte (56 Phil., 54), the abdominal wound
was less serious than that received by Aribuabo in this case, as it was not
penetrating, merely involving the muscular tissue. In said case the death of
the victim was due to a secondary hemorrhage produced twenty-four hours
after the wound had been inflicted, because of the "bodily movements of the
patient, who was in a state of nervousness, sitting up in bed, getting up and
pacing about the room, as a consequence of which the internal vessels,
already congested because of the wound, bled, and the hemorrhage thus
produced caused his death." The court in deciding the question stated that
"when a person dies in consequence of an internal hemorrhage brought on
by moving about against the doctor's orders, not because of carelessness or
a desire to increase the criminal liability of his assailant, but because of his
nervous condition due to the wound inflicted by said assailant, the crime is
homicide and not merely slight physical injuries, simply because the doctor
was of the opinion that the wound might have healed in seven days."
The grounds for this rule of jurisprudence are correctly set forth in 13
R. C. L., 751, as follows:
"While the courts may have vacilated from time to time it may be
taken to be the settled rule of the common law that one who inflicts an injury
on another will be held responsible for his death, although it may appear
that the deceased might have recovered if he had taken proper care of
himself, or submitted to a surgical operation, or that unskilled or improper
treatment aggravated the wound and contributed to the death, or that death
was immediately caused by a surgical operation rendered necessary by the
condition of the wound. The principle on which this rule is founded is one of
universal application, and lies at the foundation of all criminal jurisprudence.
It is, that every person is to be held to contemplate and to be responsible for
the natural consequences of his own acts. If a person inflicts a wound with a
deadly weapon in such a manner as to put life in jeopardy, and death follows
as a consequence of this felonious and wicked act, it does not alter its nature
or diminish its criminality to prove that other causes co-operated in
producing the fatal result. Indeed, it may be said that neglect of the wound
or its unskilful and improper treatment, which are of themselves
consequences of the criminal act, which might naturally follow in any case,
CD Technologies Asia, Inc. © 2021 cdasiaonline.com
 must in law be deemed to have been among those which were in
contemplation of the guilty party, and for which he is to be held responsible.
But, however, this may be, the rule surely seems to have its foundation in a
wise and practical policy. A different doctrine would tend to give immunity to
crime and to take away from human life a salutary and essential safeguard.
Amid the conflicting theories of medical men, and the uncertainties
attendant upon the treatment of bodily ailments and injuries, it would be
easy in many cases of homicide to raise a doubt as to the immediate cause
of death, and thereby to open a wide door by which persons guilty of the
highest crime might escape conviction and punishment."
Assuming that we should disregard Simeon Cacpal's testimony, there is
no evidence of record that the crime charged was committed by means of
the knife, Exhibit A, and we only have the extrajudicial admission of the
accused that he had committed it by means of a bamboo spit with which the
wound of the deceased might have been caused because, according to the
physician who testified in this case, it was produced by a "sharp and
penetrating" instrument.
Inasmuch as the mitigating circumstances of lack of instruction and of
intention to commit so grave a wrong as that committed should be taken
into consideration in favor of the appellant, without any aggravating
circumstances adverse to him, we modify the appealed judgment by
sentencing him to an indeterminate penalty with a minimum of four years of
prision correccional and a maximum of eight years of prision mayor,
affirming it in all other respects, with costs to said appellant.
Avanceña, C. J., Abad Santos, Hull, and Vickers, JJ., concur.

CD Technologies Asia, Inc. © 2021 cdasiaonline.com