62 Phil.

162

RECTO, J.:
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
poblacidn, 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 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 three 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 ease 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 gestx (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 extra judicial 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
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 Encyclopedic Dictionary, 176; see also XXI Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 1911 ed., 171.) If to this is added the fact that the victim in this
case was mentally 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 of fended 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
which the appellant inflicted upon the deceased was the 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,
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 correctional 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.

Judgment modified.