People vs Coricor

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People vs Coricor
G.R. No. L-48768
December 4, 1971

Facts:

Appellant was sentenced to reclusion perpetua, to indemnify the heirs of the deceased Pedro Lego in the sum of P2,000, and to pay the costs, having been found by the lower court guilty of murder committed on September 15, 1941. The evidence for the prosecution was presented on October 20 and 21, 1941, and the evidence for the defense on October 21 and 22, 1941. Six witnesses testified for the prosecution.

Issue:

W/O accused-appellant committed the crime of murder under Art 248 or death or physical injuries inflicted under exceptional circumstances under Art. 247 of the RPC?

Held:

A careful weighing of the evidence both of the prosecution and the defense leads us to the conclusion that appellant's version as to the circumstance under which Pedro Lego was killed is the more credible. That appellant should have gone to the house of Severino Regis to invite Pedro Lego and his wife to come to appellant's house so as to advise Isabel, because she had a paramour, one Saturnino Caaya, as testified to by Catalina Regis, appears not to tally with the fact that, according to the testimony of the accused, not contradicted by the same Catalina Regis, he went twice to her to complain about the illicit relations between Pedro Lego and Isabel, to the extent that appellant manifested to Catalina that if he should surprise Lego in flagrant copulation with Isabel, he will kill them and would forget that Lego is his uncle.

The court applied in the case at bar Art 247, the death or physical injuries inflicted under exceptional circumstances. Conjugal fidelity committed by a married woman and her paramour is punished, as adultery, by article 333 of the Revised Penal Code with from 4 months to 6 years of imprisonment, and the one committed by a husband and his mistress, as concubinage, by article 334, with imprisonment from 6 months and 4 years and 2 months for the erring husband and banishment for the mistress. Under article 334, not all cases of conjugal infidelity committed by a husband is punishable. The great majority of them are left unpunishable. No fiscal will think of prosecuting the husband who should indulge in sexual intercourse with discreet mistresses or with prostitutes. For such acts of conjugal infidelity, some punishable with short terms of imprisonment, others with simple banishment, and still others not punishable at all, article 247, in effect, confers to the offended spouse the power to inflict the supreme penalty of death. The banishment provided for the killer is intended more for his protection than as a penalty. Such a twisted logic seems possible only in a paranoiac mind. It is high time to relegate article 247 to where it properly belongs, to the memory of the sins that humanity promised to herself never to commit again. The majority of the Court, however, opines otherwise.

For all the foregoing, setting aside the appealed decision, appellant is found guilty of the offense of having killed Pedro Lego as punished by article 247 of the Revised Penal Code and, accordingly, is sentenced to 2 years, 4 months and 1 day of banishment, and to indemnify the heirs of Pedro Lego in the sum of P2,000.