Valenzuela vs. People Facts: The basic facts are no longer disputed before us.

The case stems from an Information charging petitioner Aristotel Valenzuela (petitioner) and Jovy Calderon (Calderon) with the crime of theft. On 19 May 1994, at around 4:30 p.m., petitioner and Calderon were sighted outside the Super Sale Club, a supermarket within the ShoeMart (SM) complex along North EDSA, by Lorenzo Lago (Lago), a security guard who was then manning his post at the open parking area of the supermarket. Lago saw petitioner, who was wearing an identification card with the mark Receiving Dispatching Unit (RDU), hauling a push cart with cases of detergent of the well-known Tide brand. Petitioner unloaded these cases in an open parking space, where Calderon was waiting. Petitioner then returned inside the supermarket, and after five (5) minutes, emerged with more cartons of Tide Ultramatic and again unloaded these boxes to the same area in the open parking space. Thereafter, petitioner left the parking area and haled a taxi. He boarded the cab and directed it towards the parking space where Calderon was waiting. Calderon loaded the cartons of Tide Ultramatic inside the taxi, then boarded the vehicle. All these acts were eyed by Lago, who proceeded to stop the taxi as it was leaving the open parking area. When Lago asked petitioner for a receipt of the merchandise, petitioner and Calderon reacted by fleeing on foot, but Lago fired a warning shot to alert his fellow security guards of the incident. Petitioner and Calderon were apprehended at the scene, and the stolen merchandise recovered. The filched items seized from the duo were four (4) cases of Tide Ultramatic, one (1) case of Ultra 25 grams, and three (3) additional cases of detergent, the goods with an aggregate value of P12,090.00. Petitioner and Calderon were first brought to the SM security office before they were transferred on the same day to the Baler Station II of the Philippine National Police, Quezon City, for investigation. It appears from the police investigation records that apart from petitioner and Calderon, four (4) other persons were apprehended by the security guards at the scene and delivered to police custody at the Baler PNP Station in connection with the incident. However, after the matter was referred to the Office of the Quezon City Prosecutor, only petitioner and Calderon were charged with theft by the Assistant City Prosecutor, in Informations prepared on 20 May 1994, the day after the incident. After pleading not guilty on arraignment, at the trial, petitioner and Calderon both claimed having been innocent bystanders within the vicinity of the Super Sale Club on the afternoon of 19 May 1994 when they were haled by Lago and his fellow security guards after a commotion and brought to the Baler PNP Station. Calderon alleged that on the afternoon of the incident, he was at the Super Sale Club to withdraw from his ATM account, accompanied by his neighbor, Leoncio Rosulada. As the queue for the ATM was long, Calderon and Rosulada decided to buy snacks inside the supermarket. It was while they were eating that they heard the gunshot fired by Lago, leading them to head out of the building to check what was transpiring. As they were outside, they were suddenly grabbed by a security guard, thus commencing their detention. Meanwhile, petitioner testified during trial that he and his cousin, a Gregorio Valenzuela, had been at the parking lot, walking beside the nearby BLISS complex and headed to ride a tricycle going to Pag-asa, when they saw the security guard Lago fire a shot. The gunshot caused him and the other people at the scene to start running, at which point he was apprehended by Lago and brought to the security office. Petitioner claimed he was detained at the security office until around 9:00 p.m., at which time he and the others were brought to the Baler Police Station. At the station, petitioner denied having stolen the cartons of detergent, but he was detained overnight, and eventually brought to the prosecutors office where he was charged with theft. During petitioners cross-examination, he admitted that he had been

employed as a bundler of GMS Marketing, assigned at the supermarket though not at SM. In a Decision promulgated on 1 February 2000, the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Quezon City, Branch 90, convicted both petitioner and Calderon of the crime of consummated theft. They were sentenced to an indeterminate prison term of two (2) years of prision correccional as minimum to seven (7) years of prision mayor as maximum. The RTC found credible the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses and established the convictions on the positive identification of the accused as perpetrators of the crime. Both accused filed their respective Notices of Appeal, but only petitioner filed a brief with the Court of Appeals, causing the appellate court to deem Calderons appeal as abandoned and consequently dismissed. Before the Court of Appeals, petitioner argued that he should only be convicted of frustrated theft since at the time he was apprehended, he was never placed in a position to freely dispose of the articles stolen. However, in its Decision dated 19 June 2003, the Court of Appeals rejected this contention and affirmed petitioners conviction. Hence the present Petition for Review, which expressly seeks that petitioners conviction be modified to only of Frustrated Theft. Even in his appeal before the Court of Appeals, petitioner effectively conceded both his felonious intent and his actual participation in the theft of several cases of detergent with a total value of P12,090.00 of which he was charged. As such, there is no cause for the Court to consider a factual scenario other than that presented by the prosecution, as affirmed by the RTC and the Court of Appeals. The only question to consider is whether under the given facts, the theft should be deemed as consummated or merely frustrated. Held: Article 6 defines those three stages, namely the consummated, frustrated and attempted felonies. A felony is consummated when all the elements necessary for its execution and accomplishment are present. It is frustrated when the offender performs all the acts of execution which would produce the felony as a consequence but which, nevertheless, do not produce it by reason of causes independent of the will of the perpetrator. Finally, it is attempted when the offender commences the commission of a felony directly by overt acts, and does not perform all the acts of execution which should produce the felony by reason of some cause or accident other than his own spontaneous desistance. Each felony under the Revised Penal Code has a subjective phase, or that portion of the acts constituting the crime included between the act which begins the commission of the crime and the last act performed by the offender which, with prior acts, should result in the consummated crime. After that point has been breached, the subjective phase ends and the objective phase begins. It has been held that if the offender never passes the subjective phase of the offense, the crime is merely attempted. On the other hand, the subjective phase is completely passed in case of frustrated crimes, for in such instances, *s+ubjectively the crime is complete. Truly, an easy distinction lies between consummated and frustrated felonies on one hand, and attempted felonies on the other. So long as the offender fails to complete all the acts of execution despite commencing the commission of a felony, the crime is undoubtedly in the attempted stage. Since the specific acts of execution that define each crime under the Revised Penal Code are generally enumerated in the code itself, the task of ascertaining whether a crime is attempted only would need to compare the acts actually performed by the accused as against the acts that constitute the felony under the Revised Penal Code. In contrast, the determination of whether a crime is frustrated or consummated necessitates an initial concession that all of the acts of execution have been performed by the offender. The critical distinction instead is whether the felony itself was actually produced by the acts of execution. The determination of whether the

felony was produced after all the acts of execution had been performed hinges on the particular statutory definition of the felony. It is the statutory definition that generally furnishes the elements of each crime under the Revised Penal Code, while the elements in turn unravel the particular requisite acts of execution and accompanying criminal intent. The long-standing Latin maxim actus non facit reum, nisi mens sit rea supplies an important characteristic of a crime, that ordinarily, evil intent must unite with an unlawful act for there to be a crime, and accordingly, there can be no crime when the criminal mind is wanting. Accepted in this jurisdiction as material in crimes mala in se, mens rea has been defined before as a guilty mind, a guilty or wrongful purpose or criminal intent, and essential for criminal liability. It follows that the statutory definition of our mala in se crimes must be able to supply what the mens rea of the crime is, and indeed the U.S. Supreme Court has comfortably held that a criminal law that contains no mens rea requirement infringes on constitutionally protected rights. The criminal statute must also provide for the overt acts that constitute the crime. For a crime to exist in our legal law, it is not enough that mens rea be shown; there must also be an actus reus.