UNITED STATES vs .

VICENTE REYES

EN BANC

[G.R. No. 12635. September 25, 1917.]

THE UNITED STATES , plaintiff-appellee, vs. VICENTE REYES,

Modesto Reyes and Eliseo Ymzon for appellant.

Acting Attorney-General Paredes for appellee.

SYLLABUS

1. CRIMINAL LAW; HOMICIDE. — One who hit another on the head with
a baston causing death, held guilty of homicide.
2. MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCE; INTENTION NOT TO COMMIT SO
GREAT A WRONG. — Circumstances No. 3 of article 9 of the Penal Code can only
be considered when the facts proven show that there exists notable and evident
disproportion between the means employed to execute the criminal act and its
consequence. (Various decisions of the supreme court of Spain.) This mitigating
circumstance not applied in the present case.

DECISION

MALCOLM, J : p

A soldier of the United States Army by the name of Guiseppe Goggiano was
killed by Vicente Reyes, the defendant and appellant, during a quarrel over a
game of cards. The implement used by Reyes was a baston (stick). The means
taken by Reyes was hitting the soldier on the head with the baston. The trial
court in view of these prominent facts and because of a finding that the
defendant did not act in self-defense, and considering neither aggravating nor
mitigating circumstances to exist, found the defendant guilty of homicide and
sentenced him to fourteen years eight months and one day of reclusion
temporal, with the accessory penalties provided by law, to indemnify the heirs of
the deceased Guiseppe Goggiano in the amount of P500, and to pay the costs. As
the case turns entirely on the credibility of witnesses, we are not disposed to
interfere with the findings of fact by the trial judge or the sentence imposed by
him which is in conformity with law.
The appellant makes only one assignment of error which requires
consideration. This is to the effect that the trial court incurred error in not finding
in favor of the accused mitigating circumstance No. 3 of article 9 of the Penal
Code, namely, that the offender had no intention to cause so great a wrong as
that committed. Remembering that the implement was a baston, the use of
which with force on the head of a person would ordinarily fracture the cranium
and cause death, the following decisions, of the supreme court of Spain collated
by the Attorney-General in his excellent brief are of particular interest and are
decisive of the point:
"The intention of the agent, as an internal act and of his own
conscience, cannot be revealed in any other manner than by the external
and overt acts which may accompany that intention, the only acts that can
be appreciated by the judicial mind; consequently, if the accused cause the
homicide by giving the deceased two blows on the side and neck with the
yoke of a plow, neither from the kind of implement used to execute the act,
nor from the intenseness and force which was employed in inflicting the
injuries, neither from the principal parts of the body to which the blows were
directed, could it be inferred nor deduced that he did not have the intention
to cause all the evil produced." (Decision of December 12, 1876.)
"When the means employed by the accused are adequate and
proportionate to the result of the crime, circumstance No. 3 of article 9
cannot be considered in his favor." (Decision of March 25, 1892).
"The intention of the culprit must be deduced, as a rule from the
nature and extent of the tangible evil produced, as this is almost always the
palpable manifestation of his will, except when the proof and other
circumstances or antecedent events may be a sufficient ground to cause
the belief that the material act has transcended the bounds of his intention."
(Decision of June 10, 1892.)
"Mitigating circumstances No. 3 cannot be considered in the injury
caused by striking with a foot stool, because the means employed by the
accused were adequate to produce not only the evil which resulted but also
another of greater import." (Decision of June 5, 1895.)
"This mitigating circumstance requires in order that it may legally be
applied that the evil produced should not be disproportionate neither to the
intensity of the means employed to execute it nor to the efficacy of the
implement used to commit it." (Decision of August 10, 1900.)
"The lack of intention to cause so serious an evil as that produced, can
only be considered in default of facts which may clearly show it when there
is such a disproportion between the resultant evil and the means employed
to cause it, so that the evil could not reasonably be presumed." (Decision of
March 22, 1901.)
"Circumstance No. 3 of article 9 can only be considered when the
facts proven show that there exists notable and evident disproportion
between the means employed to execute the criminal act and its
consequences." (Decision of January 29, 1902.)
"Mitigating circumstance No. 3 of article 9 can only be legally applied
when there is a notorious disproportion between the evil produced and the
means employed to execute it; and in the present case, the injury caused
being in correspondence with the efficacy of the implement used by the
 accused (a blow on the forehead with a pitcher causing less serious injury),
inasmuch as it is liable, the blow directed as it was on the head, to cause the
injuries suffered by the offended party, it cannot reasonably be presumed,
nor considered, that there existed in the mind of the offender an intention to
limit the consequences of his voluntary act to a less degree of gravity than
that actually caused." (Decision of July 2, 1902.)
"The intention of the offender is judged, when there are no other
elements for consideration, by the greater or less proportion of the means
employed by him to the evil produced by his act, and it being a work
implement sufficiently powerful to produce the wound suffered by the
offended party, and even another of more serious character, it must
perforce be admitted that the extent of the evil is in proportion to the
purposes of the agent." (Decision of January 4, 1905.)
Judgment is affirmed with costs of this instance against the appellant. So
ordered.
Arellano, C.J., Carson, Araullo and Street, JJ., concur.