EN
BANC
THE
PEOPLE OF THE
PHILIPPINES,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
G.
R.
No. L-8871
December
18, 1956
-versus-
ELISEO
SAWIT,
Defendant-Appellant.
D
E C I S I
O N
LABRADOR,
J :
Appeal
from a judgment
of the Court of First Instance of Nueva Ecija, Hon. Jose N. Leuterio,
presiding,
finding accused-appellant Eliseo Sawit guilty of murder and sentencing
him to reclusion perpetua, to indemnify the heirs of the
deceased
Atty. Mariano Garcia in the sum of P6,000 and to pay the costs.
The evidence for the
prosecution shows, and it is not disputed by the defense, that on
August
19, 1951 Atty. Mariano Garcia, special counsel for the City of
Cabanatuan,
had his birthday, and in celebration thereof, he arranged for an
evening
party at the house of Felino Mariano in Licab, Nueva Ecija, where dog
meat
was to be served. Members of the party came at sunset, some from a
neighboring
store of one Matias Velasquez. Among them were Zosimo Garcia, Carlos
Garcia,
Leopoldo Dimaliwat, Felino Mariano, the celebrant Atty. Mariano E.
Garcia,
and others. Enrique Perez, driver of the jeep of Zosimo Garcia, joined
the party at the house of Mariano at around seven o'clock, when it was
already dark.
Soon after his arrival,
Atty. Garcia asked Perez to call for his [Garcia] driver, one by the
name
of Eladio Lopez, so Perez went down. But just as he was going away from
the house, he was met by three persons, one of whom was armed with a
pistol,
another with a Thompson, and the third with a carbine. The person who
was
armed with a pistol [whom he identified as the accused-appellant Eliseo
Sawit] asked him where he was going, and after being told that it was
to
call for Eladio Lopez, searched his person for arms and found that he
had
a pistol, which the person took away. Perez told him that the pistol
belonged
to Zosimo Garcia. Thereupon, Perez was asked to call for Zosimo Garcia.
It so happened that the latter was at that time beside a window, so
Perez
called him to come down, but as Garcia [Zosimo] did not notice Perez,
the
latter went up the stairs and signalled Zosimo to come down, and the
latter
did so. As Zosimo Garcia went down, he asked Perez for his gun, but
Perez
answered that it had been taken by his "Tio Seong" [appellant], who was
downstairs. As soon as Garcia was down and near the three persons,
Zosimo
talked with the leader [the one with a pistol], calling the latter "Tio
Seong", but the latter did not answer but just brushed Garcia
aside.
Soon afterwards, Carlos Garcia was also asked to go down, which he did,
and once down, he was also searched for arms by the three armed persons.
By the time the food
was ready, Felino Mariano went inside from the kitchen, but he found
that
there were no more people in the sala. He went to the stairs, but he
met
thereat Nicasio Ventura, who informed him that the persons in the house
had been asked to go down. He also wanted to go down, but Ventura told
him he was not sure who those persons downstairs were. So he went to
the
kitchen, and there went down to a camarin. It was while there that he
afterwards
heard shots, and after ten minutes a person came with a lamp. The next
person to go down after Zosimo was Carlos Garcia. Carlos went to the
kitchen
and as he was about to go down, he saw two soldiers carrying guns. It
was
then that Mariano Garcia was also called down. Carlos went back to the
sala and then to the balcony, and while there he was also called down.
As soon as he reached the ground, one of the soldiers also searched him
for arms. He saw a few meters away from him his uncle Mariano being
searched
by two of the armed persons, one of whom was the one who carried the
pistol
and the other a Thompson. As they pointed the pistol and the Thompson
at
him, Mariano Garcia pushed their gun aside and said, "Don't please",
and
thereupon he ran away. As Mariano ran away, four shots were fired at
him.
Carlos Garcia promptly laid himself flat on the ground. After firing
the
shots the three armed persons ran away.
Soon thereafter, a
person came with a lamp, and he and Felino Mariano found Mariano Garcia
already dead, under the floor of the kitchen, his face flat on the
ground.
The medical officer that examined his body a day afterwards, found that
the victim had at least three gunshot wounds, one of the mandible,
another
at the left lumbar region, and a third at the right hypochondriac
region.
He declared that the wounds in the body were necessarily mortal and
that
he actually died therefrom.
It was also proved
by the prosecution that Atty. Mariano Garcia was the leader of the
civilian
volunteers, an organization of civilians armed by the Army to help
fight
the Huks, and that the organization to which Mariano Garcia had
belonged
had encounters with the Huks.
The defense set up
by the accused-appellant is that of an alibi. So the most important
issue
is the identification of the three persons who went to the house of
Felino
Mariano on the evening in question, called down the persons in the
party,
searched their persons for arms, and later fired the shots at the
deceased
Mariano Garcia. Three of the witnesses positively identified the
accused-appellant
as one of the three armed men, more particularly the one who was armed
with a pistol. The first is Enrique Perez. He declared that it was the
appellant whom he met as he went down to call for Garcia's driver, and
that he asked him where he was going, and searched for and took away
the
pistol he was carrying. Perez had known appellant long before, and
could
not possibly have been mistaken, taking into account his nearness to
appellant
and the fact that they talked to each other.
The second witness
is Zosimo Garcia, who is a nephew of appellant himself and had known
the
latter from childhood. He testified that as he went down the stairs,
his
driver Enrique Perez told him that it was appellant who had taken his
gun;
that he met appellant and his two companions near the house of Felino
Mariano
and talked to him, pleading with him; that appellant even asked him for
Atty. Garcia. The third is Carlos Garcia. At least the first two could
not have made a mistake as to appellant's identity, having met the
latter
at close range and talked to him. There was a strong light (Petromax)
in
the sala of the house where the party was, and as the floor of the
house
was only more than a meter high, and there was a balcony towards the
street
from which the three armed persons had come, the place where appellant
was met and was seen by the two witnesses must have been sufficiently
illuminated
indirectly by the Petromax lamp in the sala to have allowed Perez and
Zosimo
Garcia, old acquaintances, to have positively identified appellant.
Zosimo
would not have implicated an uncle had he not identified him on the
night
in question. Besides, the defense of alibi presented is not
satisfactory.
Appellant said that during the period from April, 1951 to April, 1952
he
was in the Caraballo Mountains. That fact does not exclude the
possibility
of his having gone down to Licab in the month of August, 1951, the
month
when the incident took place. Then he has not offered any witness to
corroborate
his defense, or any circumstance that may convince us of his absence
from
the neighborhood, and that it was impossible for him to have been one
of
the three men who appeared in Licab on the night in question.
The second important
defense relied upon by appellant's counsel is the fact that it was not
shown that the bullets that wounded the deceased had come from the
pistol
of the appellant. As a matter of fact upon exhumation of the body of
the
deceased before the trial, it was found out that a .30 cal. pellet was
lodged in the sternum. This must have come from the carbine of one of
the
companions of the appellant and not from the pistol of the latter,
which
was a cal. .45. The Thompson used by the the third was also a cal. .45.
None of the lead pellets found in the other parts of the body of the
deceased
could be determined as to their caliber. On the above facts counsel for
appellant argues that the guilt of the appellant [in inflicting any of
the wounds] has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. And as to
conspiracy,
he further argues that the same is based on mere inference and there is
also no satisfactory proof thereof.
That the shots must
have been fired by at least two of the three armed men who came that
night
to the house where the party was being held is evident, as found by the
trial court, from the fact that the wounds were inflicted from
different
directions. We may add that the acts of the three assailants
conclusively
prove conspiracy. In the first place, one of them, the one with the
pistol,
the appellant herein, was always the one who searched for weapons and
directed
the questions. The other two merely cooperated with him. In the second
place, the almost simultaneous firing of the shots [four of them],
evidently
all fired at the deceased alone, and not at the others, shows a
previous
concert to kill the deceased. In the third place, the assailants ran
away
after the deceased had fallen down, and this fact shows only one common
purpose, that of liquidating the deceased. In view of these
circumstances,
we find that the claim that there was no conspiracy or proof thereof is
without merit.
The judgment finding
the accused-appellant guilty of murder with the qualifying circumstance
of treachery, is fully sustained by the evidence. Said judgment, as
well
as the sentence imposed, are hereby affirmed. With costs against the
accused-appellant.
So ordered.
Paras, C.J.,
Bengzon, Padilla, Montemayor, Bautista Angelo, Concepcion, Reyes, J. B.
L., Endencia and Felix, JJ., concur. |