FIRST
DIVISION
THE
UNITED STATES,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
G.
R.
No. 7447
January
2, 1913
-versus-
NICASIO
CAPULE,
Defendant-Appellant.
D E C I S I
O N
TORRES, J:
Appeal by the defendant
from a judgment of conviction rendered in this case by the Hon. Vicente
Jocson, Judge.
On September 2, 1903,
Nicasio Capule, for the purpose of appropriating to himself a tract of
coconut land, situated in the town of San Pablo, Laguna, without the
knowledge
or consent of the owners thereof, the married couple Aniceto Maghirang
and Isabel Pili, by agreement and cooperation with the Notary Public,
Inocente
Martinez, who later died, prepared and drew up a document setting forth
the sale in his favor of the said land, pretending that it was made and
executed by the said owners of the tract, stating in the document that
they had made the declaration that they had sold said land for the sum
of 550 pesos paid at the time of the sale to the vendors, and Jacinto
Peñaflor
and Jorge Tolentino appear in said document the alleged vendors did not
know how to do so. Reordered at the bottom of the document was their
ratification
of its contents in the presence of said Notary Public, before whom the
said married couple appeared. The defendant Capule exhibited said
document
later, although he had been assured that it was false, in a trial
before
the Justice of the Peace of that town in an attempt to sustain his
alleged
right to the said piece of land.
For this reason, a
Complaint was filed on February 3, 1910, by the Provincial Fiscal in
the
Court of First Instance of Laguna, charging Nicasio Capule with the
crime
of falsification of a public document and estafa. After due trial, the
Judge rendered judgment therein on March 21, 1911, sentencing Nicasio
Capule
to the penalty of eight years of presidio mayor, to payment of a fine
of
2,000 pesetas, the accessories, and the cost; from which judgment, the
defendant appealed.
The document whose
falsification is here in question, Exhibit A, the original whereof
appears
at pages 17 and 148 of the file of exhibits and has been attached to
the
Complaint, seems to have been executed on September 2, 1903, by Aniceto
Maghirang y Espiritu and Isabel Pili y Emnaceno, of
legal
age, residents of San Pablo, who declare therein that they have agreed
with the accused Capule on the real and absolute sale of a piece of
land
planted with 42 fruit-bearing coconut trees and approximately 300 not
bearing
fruit, for the sum of P550, which the purchaser has paid them to their
entire satisfaction, which land is located in the place called
Quinayoan,
barrio of Dolores of the said town, with its boundaries and situation
stated;
and further setting forth that the land is the property of Isabel Pili,
who acquired it by inheritance from her deceased niece, Claudia Reyes,
according to a certified copy of some affidavit proceedings; that the
land
described had not been sold, ceded or encumbered in favor of any person
other than Nicasio Capule, to whom then and thenceforth they delivered
the possession and usufruct of said land as its legitimate owner, with
right to alienate it, they being responsible to Capule, his heirs and
successors
in interest for the ownership, and agreeing to defend him against any
just
claims that might be presented; and Nicasio Capule y Capitulo,
informed
of the contents of the document by the vendors do not know how to sign
Eulogio Ortega and Doroteo Guia do so at their request, as does also
the
purchaser, who signs the document in duplicate and to the same effect
in
the town hall of San Pablo, and there furthermore appear therein the
signatures
of Jacinto Peñaflor and Jorge Tolentino as witnesses. On the
same
date appears the certificate of the notary public, whose commission
extended
to January 1, 1905, wherein it is recorded that personally appeared
before
him the married couple Maghirang and Pili, whom he knew as the
executors
of the foregoing document and they ratified it as executed of their own
free will, the husband, as well as the purchaser, exhibiting his cedula,
but not the woman because she was exempt from payment thereof.
It likewise appears
from the evidence adduced in this case that said married couple
Maghirang
and Pili were the owners of said land, which they possessed and had the
usufruct of and for which they paid to the Government the corresponding
land tax; that on January 31, 1904, said married couple sold a portion
of said land with 150 coconut trees to Esteban Reyes and his wife
Elisea
Maghirang for 250 pesos, according to Exhibit B, and since then Reyes
has
possessed and had the usufruct of the portion of land he had bought,
and
made declaration before the land-tax board in May, 1906, as of land
belonging
to him, according to Exhibit E, which sales was ratified by the vendors
in favor of Reyes before the notary Segundo Abrera on May 2, 1008,
Exhibit
C.
On May 2, 1908, the
married couple, Aniceto Maghirang and Isabel Pili, likewise sold the
remaining
portion of the said land with its coconut trees to Melecio
Briñas
for the sum of 650 pesos, before the Notary Public Segundo Abrera,
according
to Exhibit J, and since then Briñas has possessed and had the
usufruct
of the land purchased, although in the tax list the tract continues in
May, 1006, Exhibit K, and had been paying the tax from 1903, Exhibit P,
although Reyes, the owner of one part which he had bought in 1904,
appears
to have paid the tax up to 1910, Exhibit F.
Although Esteban Reyes
was in lawful possession of a portion of the land he had purchased, on
February 2, 1909, Nicasio Capule filed a complaint before the Justice
of
the Peace of San Pablo accusing him of the theft of coconuts from the
land
he possessed and of which Reyes was the owner; but the Court dismissed
the case for lack of evidence of the right alleged by the plaintiff,
with
the costs against him, Exhibit D, page 17 of the record.
On April 16, 1909,
Nicasco Capule, claiming to be the owner of the coconut land situated
in
Dolores, the subject matter of an alleged sale, accused the married
couple
Maghirang and Pili and Eusebio Soriano of theft, and in spite of the
fact
that he exhibited the document marked "Exhibit A", setting forth the
said
sale made in his favor by that married couple, the justice of the peace
acquitted the accused of the crime of theft, Exhibit 1, page 67; and on
June 4, 1909, according to Exhibit I, page 107 of said record, Aniceto
Maghirang and Guadalupe Javier were also acquitted of the crime of
coercion
with which they were accused.
On October 21, 1909,
Nicasio Capule and his wife were accused by Nemesio Briñas of
the
crime of theft in the justice of the peace court of San Pablo and upon
trial were sentenced to two months of arresto mayor and payment of
P14.25
with the costs, from which judgment they appealed to the Court of First
Instance, page 54 of the record, although at the request of the fiscal
the case was dismissed, because the action exercised by the complainant
had to be settled in a civil suit.
Although Capule
presented
in some of the said hearings before the Justice of the Peace court of
San
Pablo, the deed of sale, Exhibit A, for the purpose of proving that he
was the owner of the land in question, yet in the judgments rendered
therein
said instrument was held to be false and no probative value whatever
was
attached to it.
Aniceto Maghirang
denies
that he sold the said land to Nicasio Capule or that he executed in his
favor any document of sale, stating that he had conferred a power of
attorney
upon him so that he might represent himself and his wife, who later
died,
in a suit they had with Maximino Reyes, because of the absolute
confidence
they had in the defendant, just as it was the latter himself who drew
up
the document that was later signed in his stead by Eulogio Ortega,
because
he could not read or write; but he denied that he or his wife had ever
been in the house of the notary Inocente Martinez to execute or ratify
any document of that he and his wife Isabel Pili, when she was alive,
had
told the defendant Capule that they wished to sell the said land and
that
he had offered to but it.
Nicasio Capule avers
that the said document, Exhibit A, was drawn up in his own house in the
presence of the married couple, Aniceto Maghirang and Isabel Pili, for
whom he had to translate the contents of the document into Tagalog, and
they then signified their agreement; and as they could not sign,
Eulogio
Ortega and Doroteo Guia did so in their stead, and at that time Jacinto
Peñaflor and Jorge Tolentino also signed it as witnesses; and
that
on the afternoon of that day the married couple Maghirang and Pili
appeared
in the house of the notary Martinez and ratified before him the said
document
in the presence of the witness testifying; all of which Aniceto
Maghirang
denies, asserting that he did not execute said document, or ratify it
before
the notary Martinez, for he had never been in the latter's house nor
had
he ever seen the document, Exhibit A. His wife, Isabel Pili, did not
testify,
for she had died in the meantime.
Let Us examine the
statements of the persons who appear to have signed the document,
impugned
as false, in place of the married couple executing it, and of one of
the
witnesses to the execution of the said document, for it does not appear
that the other, Jorge Tolentino, testified.
Upon making his
statement
and after having been informed of the contents of the document, Exhibit
A, Doroteo Guia denied that he had been present in the drawing up and
execution
thereof, or that he had ever known that the married couple Aniceto
Maghirang
and Isabel Pili had sold any land to the defendant, Nicasio Capule,
although
he remembered that on a certain occasion said married couple had asked
him to sign for them in the defendant Capule's house a document of
power
of attorney made out in Capule's favor so that the latter might
represent
them in a suit they prosecuting against Maximino Reyes, and believing
that
it was in fact a question of a power of attorney, as they had assured
him,
went to the defendant's house and without informing himself of the
contents
of the document that Capule spread out on a table, signed it, but he
denies
that Eulogio Ortega, Jacinto Peñaflor, and Jorge Tolentino, with
whom he was acquitted, were present in that house.
Eulogio Ortega likewise
denied that he signed any document of sale of land or that he had ever
been informed that the married couple Maghirang and Pili has sold any
land
to the defendant Nicasio Capule, although he remembers that one day
about
seven years ago Nicasino Capule, although he remembers that one day
about
seven years ago Nicasio Capule and Isabel Pili came to his house and
the
latter told him that as she did not know how to write she begged him to
do the favor of signing in her stead a power of attorney, whereupon the
defendant told him that as he did not know Spanish the contents of said
document would be translated to him so that he might understand them,
stating
at the same time that a power of attorney was conferred upon him,
Capule,
by Aniceto Maghirang and Isabel Pili in the suit against Maximino
Reyes,
the attorney thus authorized responding for its result, without the
necessity
for the intervention of the married couple granting the power; and that
after being informed of the contents of the document presented to him
he
signed it, and he asserts that said document is Exhibit A; that on that
occasion Doroteo Guia, Jacinto Peñaflor, and Jorge Tolentino
were
not present; and that one Sunday, when he was passing a tienda with
Jorge
Tolentino and Domingo Capuno, the defendant Capule, who was there,
called
to him and after offering them wine told him that they should
understand
each other for that document which he, Capule, had said was a power of
attorney was really a deed of sale executed in his favor by Aniceto
Maghirang
and in case of winning the suit Capule would give him P200.
Jacinto
Peñaflor,
who figures in said document as a witness, having the same before him,
stated that the signature which appears therein with his name and
surname
looks like his, but he could not assert definitely whether such
signature
was his or not, for he does not remember having signed such a document
in the presence of the married couple Maghirang and Pili and the
individuals
Eulogio Ortega, Doroteo Guia, and Jorge Tolentino, setting forth the
sale
of a tract of land to Nicasio Capule, and that he did not recognize the
signatures of Doroteo Guia and Eulogio Ortega.
From the result of
taking these statements and the conduct of the accused together, it is
logically inferred that after preparing the document, Exhibit A, he
tried
by all the means he thought expedient to assert his ownership of the
land
which, under an alleged title of acquisition, had come to be his
property
and to that end he tried to dispose of the products of the young trees
that were on the tract, even daring to trample upon the legitimate
rights
of its original owners and of the new ones who had later acquired it,
up
to the point of accusing them as perpetrators of crimes directed
against
his pretended and false right of ownership, which he claimed to have
acquired
through the said false instrument.
Believing that with
the document, Exhibit A, he could get the court to override the true
owners
of the land, which he pretended its original owners had sold, in the
various
complaints he presented before the justice of the peace of San Pablo
against
the offended alleged owners and one of the new owners who acquired part
of the land in question, as well as when he was accused of theft by the
owner of the remaining part of the tract, the defendant dared to assert
that he was the owner thereof and of the coconut trees growing thereon,
even to the point of exhibiting said false instrument, but in spite of
his allegations and his documentary evidence the persons accused by him
were acquitted, while Capule himself was convicted of theft of coconuts
on a complaint of one of the owners of the said land. The notary,
Inocente
Martinez, was not examined, for he had died in the meantime.
It, therefore, appears
to be plainly proven that the crime of falsification of a document has
been committed, and while it may not be public, still it is of an
official
or notarial character, provided for and penalized in Articles 300 and
301,
because the defendant executed upon said notarial document of an
official
character acts constituting falsification, by counterfeiting therein
the
intervention of the married couple Aniceto Maghirang and Isabel Pili,
to
whom he ascribed statements different from what they had made to him
and
by perverting the truth in the narration of facts, getting two persons
to sign in the name of said married couple through deceit, after giving
them to understand that the document contained a commission or power of
attorney, when in fact it was a deed of sale of a piece of land, the
legitimate
owners whereof had never intended or consented to its alienation.
None of the persons
who appear to have signed document and seem to have been present at its
execution were informed of its true contents, because they all confided
with the greatest good faith in the false and deceitful statements of
the
defendant, believing what he said to the effect that said instrument
was
commission voluntarily conferred upon, him by the couple executing it,
who never intended to execute any document of sale of their property to
the defendant, who went to the extreme of getting a notary to certify
to
its ratification before him, made apparently by the alleged vendors in
the contents of the false document.
The fact that the
married
couple Maghirang and Pili did not know how to read and write certainly
reveals great ignorance and lack of culture in them, but when they got
to be landowners and acquired property of some value, they cannot be
absolutely
denied the ability to distinguish a deed of sale from a power of
attorney,
because they have demonstrated well enough that they understood their
purpose
to be that the defendant should represent them in a suit pending in a
court
and that they had never intended or executed any act for the alienation
of a tract of land belonging to them in favor of the defendant, and it
is therefore unquestionable that he took advantage of the opportunity
when
he was to have executed a document or instrument of power of attorney,
which the married couple desired, to draw up maliciously and
deceitfully
a deed of sale in his favor, deceiving the alleged vendors and the two
persons who signed for them and making them believe that the document
executed
was a power of attorney or commission, when in fact it was deed of sale
and is the Exhibit A, wherein, if he did not forge the signatures of
the
two witnesses Peñaflor and Tolentino, he must have obtained them
in an equally deceitfully way.
If it were true that
the vendors had really alienated their coconut land to the defendant,
their
continuing to pay the land tax is unexplained. In January, 1904, a part
of said land with its coconut trees was sold to Esteban Reyes and in
May,
1908, the rest of the tract was sold to Melecio Briñas. Persons
so simple, even ignorant and of little culture, as the offended
parties,
would not have dared to sell successively to two of their neighbors in
two portions the said land, if it had been in fact already sold to the
defendant Capule; while the latter, by profession a clerk and acting as
such for the notary Martinez, who made sworn statements before the
assessment
board and paid the land tax for the year 1906, never complied with
these
obligations of landowner in connection with the land which, according
to
Exhibit A, he had acquired on September 2, 1903, yet on the other hand
it does not appear why he did not enter in possession of the tract if
he
had really bought it in September of that year, which indicates that
although
he dared to draw up a false document with the connivance of the notary,
his boldness did not prevail to the extent of depriving in a frank and
open manner its legitimate owners of the possession of the land by
appealing
to the courts to assert his right, provided he was sure that it was
legitimate.
Although under Article
535 of the Penal Code, those who commit fraud by causing another to
subscribe
a document by the use of deceit, as the defendant has done, incur,
according
to paragraph 7 thereof, the penalties set forth in the preceding
article;
still when as in the present case the crime of falsification was
committed
for the purpose of getting a piece of real property, which is the
profit
its perpetrator sought to obtain, he is regarded as duly punished as
guilty
of falsification of a notarial document, in which crime fraud or estafa
is held to be included, with the penalties indicated in said Article
301
of the Code.
The defendant pleaded
not guilty and alleged that the married couple Maghirang and Pili had
positively
sold him the land to which Exhibit A refers for the sum of P500 which
he
forthwith delivered to them, Eulogio Ortega and Doroteo Guia and two
other
eyewitnesses to the execution of the document having signed the
instrument
which he drew up in his house in the presence of all of them, and that
it was he who drew up the certificate of ratification authorized by the
notary and interpreted the contents of the document with its
ratification
before the notary to the vendors, who really did not know or understand
Spanish, on the afternoon of the same date on which said instrument was
drawn up; further stating that immediately afterwards he took
possession,
in the same month of September, 1903, of the land he had bought and
from
that time on picked the fruit the coconut trees produced, although he
was
disturbed in his possession by the vendors themselves and the neighbors
Esteban Reyes and Melecio Briñas; that it was true that he had
not
in 1906 made any declaration of ownership of said land, as is ordered
for
the purpose of assessment, but he paid the land tax for that time by
delivering
the money to Isabel Pili, although he did not know whether the receipts
had been made out in her name. The defendant, who is a person of more
education
and knowledge than the offended parties, even alleged other defenses
which
were in like manner as those stated completely unsupported.
He tried to prove that
in January 1906, he sold said land under pacto de retro for two
years to Andres Borja, who possessed it during those two years,
although
the alleged purchaser Borja said that only a private document was made
out for the sale nor did he require of the defendant any previous
document
of ownership to evidence the defendant's right to the land sold, which
private document was not exhibited in the case and no proof was adduced
to show Borja's possession of the land sold to him; and what is
stranger
still in that in the declaration of ownership of the land, Exhibit K,
page
116, presented by the offended party Aniceto Maghirang in May of the
same
year, 1906, the alleged Andres Borja appears to have signed as a
witness,
attesting that the land was Aniceto Maghirang's and thus Andres Borja
signs
at page 87 of his statement, in spite of the alleged previous purchase,
nor does it appear that the defendant redeemed the tract.
An attempt was also
made to prove that in November, 1908, the defendant Capule sold the
same
land absolutely to Marcelino Capiriña with another tract, which
is set forth in the document, Exhibit B, ratified before a notary, for
the sum of P2,500, and the purchaser forthwith took possession of the
lands
sold. If this absolute sale is true it is incomprehensible why the
purchaser
Capiriña did not ever attempt to enter into possession of the
land
in question sold to him in November, 1908, on which date the original
owners,
Maghirang and Pili, had already got rid of said land, having sold a
part
thereof to Esteban Reyes on January 31, 1904, and the remainder on May
2, 1908, to Melecio Briñas. These new owners took possession
from
that time on of the respective portions of the land they the purchaser
Capiriña asked the alleged vendor to make delivery of the land
sold
to him, or that he ever appealed in any way to the courts. Moreover, in
presenting his complaints years later against the married couple
Maghirang
and Pili and others, the defendant Capule did so in the capacity of
owner
of that very land, so it is not true that he had previously sold it to
the said Capiriña.
These two alleged sales
to Borja and Capiriña were ways and means chosen by the
defendant
to see if he could effectually deprive the married couple Maghirang and
Pili of their right to the land in question, since at that time he did
not yet dare to exhibit the false instrument he had maliciously and
fraudulently
drawn up and he did not secure from said document the results he
expected
and intended to become the owner of the land by means of a false
instrument.
Likewise, the alleged
transaction that he says Eulogio Ortega proposed to him to allow
rescission
of the alleged sale in the document, Exhibit A, although return of the
price by the vendors, a transaction proposed, according to the accused
and his witness Silvestre Capiriña, one day in the month of
July,
1909, is in every way, unlikely to have been made in the name of
Aniceto
Maghirang, because the land had already been sold some years before to
Esteban Reyes and Melecio Briñas, and therefore the offended
party
could not get Ortega to talk with the defendant to propose said
transaction
for the return of a piece of land that had never been sold to him but
to
the said Reyes and Briñas in 1904 and 1908, and in 1909 he no
longer
had any interest or right in the land in question, aside from the fact
that he has not proved that the offended party Maghirang ever intrusted
such a commission to Eulogio Ortega denied having interviewed the
defendant
Capule on behalf of Aniceto Maghirang. Such allegations are nothing
more
than ingenious quibbles and tricks invented by the defendant's counsel
to save him from the punishment he deserves as the proven perpetrator
of
the crime of falsification.
Starting from the
hypothesis
that the defendant really obtained in a fraudulent and deceitful manner
the consent of the married couple Maghirang and Pili to the execution
of
said false instrument, his counsel argues that still he was not guilty
of the crime of falsification of a public document, in accordance with
the finding of this court in the decision of the case against Geronimo
Milla [4 Phi. Rep., 391], wherein the following principle was laid down:
"The fact that one's
intimidation, or fraud does not make the contract a false contract, and
therefore a person who has obtained such contract by those means,
whatever
be the crime he may be guilty of, is not guilty of the crime of
falsification
either of a public or of a private document."
This was the question of
a contract wherein the offended parties gave their consent to the
execution
of the document that was later impugned as false, although this consent
was obtained through intimidation which the defendants in that case,
Juan
Cardona and Geronimo Milla, had used upon them, and for this reason the
court, in view of the fact that the contracting parties consented to
the
terms of the instrument, could not find that there was falsification in
the statement of the facts, according to Article 300 of the Penal Code,
merely because the consent had been secured through intimidation.
As has been seen, there
was no contract in the present case, nor any consent to the contract
pretended
to have been stipulated in the instrument, Exhibit A, wherein the
defendant
entered statements ascribed to the alleged vendors, who proposed and
intended
to execute an instrument of commission or power of attorney in favor of
the defendant, but not a deed of sale, as in bad faith and with evident
perverseness the defendant did, perverting the truth in the statement
of
the facts and ascribing to the offended parties statement document,
since
the statements set forth therein were not characteristic and
constitutive
of an instrument of power of attorney in his favor in order that he
might
represent them in a suit against Maximino Reyes.
Finally, the Decision
of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Weems vs. U.
S.
[217 U. S., 349] is vainly invoked, for Nicasio Capule is not a public
officer and, moreover, as he is accused of the crime of falsification
of
a notarial document of official character equivalent to a public
document
the principle laid down in said decision is totally inapplicable in his
favor. The defendant Capule does not come within the purview of Article
300 of the Penal Code, but of 301, which fixes the penalty, not of cadena
temporal but of presidio mayor; further keeping in mind
that
the act of falsification of a public document in itself constitutes a
crime,
morally and legally punishable, even though to date the penal law with
respect to falsification of a public document committed by public
officers,
in lieu of said Article 300 of the Code, has not yet been promulgated;
but Article 301, applicable to the present case, has not been repealed
and subsists in all its force.
The concurrence of
neither extenuating nor aggravating circumstances can be found in the
commission
of the crime, and, therefore, the penalty fixed in said Article 301 of
the Code must be imposed in its medium degree.
For these reasons,
whereby the errors assigned to the judgment appealed from are found to
be refuted, We hold that it should be affirmed; provided, however, that
Nicasio Capule be sentenced to the penalty of eight years and one day
of presidio mayor, to the accessories fixed in Article 57 of
the
Code,
to the payment of a fine of 5,000 pesetas, without subsidiary
imprisonment
in case of insolvency, according to Article 51; and to the costs in the
case. So ordered.
Arellano, C.J.,
Mapa, Johnson, and Carson, JJ., concur. |