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FIRST
DIVISION
THE UNITED STATES,
Complainant-Appellant,
G.
R.
No. 596
August
19, 1902
-versus-
ANASTASIO
CARMONA,
Defendant-Appellee.
D E C I S I
O N
LADD, J :
The defendant was tried
for asesinato in the court below and acquitted. The case is now
pending in this Court on appeal. The Solicitor-General and counsel for
the defendant have united in a petition that he be declared to be
embraced
within the President's amnesty proclamation of July 4, last. The
circumstances
under which the deceased met with his death and the defendant's
connection
therewith are stated in the judgment of the court below as follows:
"The accused,
Anastasio
Carmona, was a captain in the so-called insurrectionary army. Acting in
this capacity he issued an order to four soldiers under his command to
lie in wait for the deceased, a tailor named Marcelo Blas, at a place
known
as Maytubig, in the district of Malate, in the city of Manila, and to
arrest
him as a spy in the service of the Americans and the police. In
pursuance
of this order these soldiers lay in wait for Blas at the place
designated,
and as he passed by, accompanied by his wife and one Domingo Tansio, on
the afternoon of the 3rd of October, 1900, and after a short
conversation,
in which they told him that their superior officer wanted to have his
measure
taken for a suit of clothes, Blas refusing to go because it was too
late,
two of the men threw themselves upon him and stabbed him to death,
leaving
his body in the middle of the road."
These findings of
the Court
below are supported by the evidence in the record. An examination of
the
record also shows that there was some uncontradicted evidence to the
effect
that an order had been issued by an insurrectionary officer superior in
command to the defendant, directing the arrest of all Filipino spies,
and
we think the conclusion is entirely warranted by the evidence that the
defendant was acting in pursuance of this order in commanding the
arrest
of the deceased.
The
defendant having
participated in the insurrection against the Government of the United
States,
comes within the description in the proclamation of the classes of
persons
to whom the amnesty is extended. The crime of which he is guilty - if
he
is guilty of any crime of which he can be convicted upon the complaint
in this case - belongs also to one of the classes of offense covered by
the proclamation. It was committed in the course of the insurrection
against
the Government of the United States; it was committed pursuant to
orders
issued by insurrectionary military authorities, and it was committed
for
military purposes in the interest of the insurrection, and without any
motive of private revenge or hatred whatever, so far as is disclosed by
the record, and falls, therefore, within the designation of "offenses
political
in their character," as that expression is used in the proclamation,
even
placing upon the words the narrowest interpretation of which they are
in
any possible view susceptible.
The
defendant is,
therefore,
declared to be entitled to the benefit of the proclamation upon filing
in this court the oath prescribed therein as a condition of the
amnesty,
and upon the filing of such oath the cause will be returned to the
Court
below with directions that the defendant be discharged with costs de
oficio.
So ordered.
Arellano, C.J.,
Torres, Willard and Cooper, JJ., concur.
Mapa, J.,
did
not sit in this case. |
