Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
*
No. L-74145. June 17, 1987.
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* EN BANC.
654
PADILLA, J.:
655
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1 Const. (1973), Art. IV, Sec. 17: "No person shall be held to answer for
a criminal offense without due process of law." Reiterated in Art. III, Sec.
14, par. (1) of the 1987 Constitution.
2 Const. (1973), Art. IV, Sec. 19: "In all criminal prosecutions, the
accused shall be presumed innocent until the contrary is proved, and shall
enjoy the right to be heard by himself and counsel, to be in
657
3
In Terry v. State, where a deaf-mute accused of
manslaughter was not provided with an interpreter despite
repeated requests from counsel, it was held:
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formed of the nature and cause of the accusation against him, to have a speedy;
impartial, and public trial, to meet the witnesses face to face and to have
compulsory process to secure the attendance of witnesses and the production of
evidence in his behalf. x x x" Reiterated in Art III, Sec. 14, par (2) of the 1987
Constitution.
3 Ala. App. 100, 105 So. 386 (1925)
658
sovereign state must and will accord the means by which its
citizens, humble and afflicted though they may be, shall receive
all the rights, benefits and privileges which4 the Constitution,
laws, regulations, and rules of practice provide.
The basic constitutional infirmity alone in the conduct of
the case against the accused is, in our candid assessment,
fatal to the judgment of conviction meted out against him.
Aside from the unfair setting and circumstance in which
the accused was convicted, insufficiency of evidence to
warrant a finding of guilty beyond reasonable doubt also
leads this Court to set aside the conviction. The following
events and circumstances are relevant in this regard:
On 1 May 1976, at past eight o'clock in the evening, the
accused and the deceased were last seen walking away
together from a sari-sari store where they had been
drinking tuba steadily in apparent harmony. At around
eleven thirty of the same evening, the accused suddenly
appeared in the house of Wilson Evangelista, who was then
with relatives butchering a pig for the baptism of his child
the following day. The accused was panting and trembling,
and told Wilson Evangelista in sign language that he had
come from Calamagoy, at the side of the canal, where there
were persons fighting on the road. Evangelista later
testified that he noticed the accused wearing a fatigue shirt
with a blood-stain on it, and carrying a flashlight.
On 2 May 1976, Patrolman Reynaldo Pinto, Jr., was told
to investigate a case of robbery with homicide with the
deceased Martin Francisco as victim, and to arrest the
accused on the basis of Wilson Evangelista's statement that
he saw the accused with a bloodstained shirt the previous
evening when the crime could conceivably have occurred.
Patrolman Pinto did so that very day. Several days later,
he was also able to recover the deceased's wristwatch and
flashlight from the house of the accused's father allegedly
through the assistance of the accused himself.
Upon being asked who killed the deceased, the accused
allegedly admitted to Pat. Pinto in sign language that it
was
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4 Id at 387.
659
"The prosecution proved and which this Court finds that the
accused was the last person to be seen with the deceased, and that
he was drunk when he left the store of prosecution witness
Salome del Socorro together with the deceased. The Court also
finds that the accused's clothes had bloodstain on it when he went
to the house of prosecution witness Wilson Evangelista at 11:30 in
the evening of May 1,1976, the night when the deceased was
robbed and killed. The seiko 5 actus wrist watch and the
flashlight colored red and white both belonging to the deceased
Martin Francisco were recovered from the possession of the
accused and which recovery was done with his help. The
unexplained possession by the accused of the properties belonging
to the deceased proved that he took these things unlawfully. The
fifteen (15) stab wounds which were inflicted on the deceased,
many of which were fatal wounds proved that a much younger
[man] than the deceased could have inflicted the same. In the case
at bar, the accused is very much younger than the deceased who
was 63 years old at the time of his death, x x x frail and without
physical attributes, unlike the accused who looks healthy, robust
and young x x x.
While it is true that Pat. Pinto and his companion were able to
get a statement from the accused without telling him in advance
of his constitutional rights, due to difficulty in explaining them in
sign language, the accused's statement by sign language was
coupled with his voluntary help in recovering the things belonging
to the deceased. Furthermore, the court considered and took note
of the plea of guilty which was entered into by the accused on his
first arraignment by sign language through Mr. Alejandro Muñoz
who is an associate of the accused in their younger days." (Italics
supplied.)
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5 18 Phil. 90 (1910)
6 Id at 96-97.
7 People v. Esquivel, 82 Phil. 453, 459 (1948)
661
Decision reversed.
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8 Const. (1973), Art. IV, Sec. 20, "No person shall be compelled to be a
witness against himself. Any person under investigation for the
commission of an offense shall have the right to remain silent and to
counsel, and to be informed of such right. No force, violence, threat,
intimidation or any other means which vitiates the free will shall be used
against him. Any confession obtained in violation of this section shall be
inadmissible in evidence." Cf. Art. III, Sec. 12 of the 1987 Constitution.
662
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