PEOPLE v. MACEDA Criminal Procedure - C.

Bautista

Keywords: Appeal from the decision of RTC Benguet convicting Maqueda of robbery with homicide and serious physical injuries J. Davide, Jr. FACTS: Britisher Horace William Barker and Filipino wife, Teresita Mendoza, reside in Tuba, Benguet. On 27 April 1991, Horace was brutally slain and Teresita badly battered with lead pipes on the occasion of a robbery in their house. Rene Salvamante, the victims former houseboy, was pinpointed. Richard Malig was initially included in the information robbery with homicide and serious physical injuries filed in the RTC of Benguet. Only Malig was arrested. Before his arraignment, the prosecution filed a motion to amend the information to implead as co-accused Hector Maqueda alias Putol. On the hearing of the motion the next day, the Prosecutor asked that Malig be dropped from the information because the evidence against him wasnt sufficient. The motion was granted. Warrants for the arrest of Salvamante and Maqueda were issued. Maqueda was arrested and he filed an application for bail about a month later. He categorically stated that he is willing and volunteering to be a State witness, as he is the least guilty among the accused. Salvamante continued to elude arrest. Maqueda was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime of robbery with homicide and serious physical injuries. Prosecutions version: - At 6 AM on 27 August 1991, Norie Dacara, a househelp who shared a room with Julieta Villanueva (her cousin and fellow househelp), got up and went to the toilet. There, she was surprised to see Rene Salvamante (whom she knew because she and Julieta replaced Salvamante and his sister). - Salvamante suddenly strangled her and she saw a fair-complexioned, tall man she identified as Maqueda at his side. She fled towards the garage but Salvamante pulled her back into the house. - Julieta got up and saw a man brandishing a lead pipe outside her door. She pointed to Maqueda as the man she saw. She immediately closed the door and she held on to it as the man was trying to force his way in. - The shouts awakened Teresita. In the dining room, she saw Salvamante and a man she identified as Maqueda. They rushed to her and beat her with lead pipes until she lost consciousness. Salvamenta made Julieta and Norie open the door of the garage and then they hid in their room. - Mike Tabayan and Mark Pacio were in a waiting shed beside the Asin road a kilometer away from the Barkers home and two men asked them if the road they were following would lead to Naguilian, La Union. Mike replied that it did not. They identified the shorter
P.M.R. Gairanod

PEOPLE v. MACEDA Criminal Procedure - C. Bautista

man as Salvamante and Maqueda as the taller man with an amputated left hand and a right hand with a missing thumb and index finger. - September 1, 1991: A police team from the Tuba Police Station came to the hospital bed of Mrs. Barker and asked her to identify the persons who assaulted her. She pointed out one who turned out to be Richard Malig. When informed of the investigation, Dr. Hernandez told them it was improper for them to conduct an investigation since Mrs. Barker had not yet fully recovered consciousness and her eyesight had not yet improved. - After efforts to locate Maqueda had failed, on March 1992, they received information that Maqueda had been arrested in Guinyangan. The Guinyangan police turned him over to Maj. Anagaran who brought him to the Benguet Provincial Jail. - Before Maj. Anagaran arrived, Maqueda was taken to the headquarters of the 235th PNP Mobile Force Company and SP03 Amando Molleno got his statement. He informed Maqueda of his rights and Maqueda signed a Sinumpaang Salaysay narrating his participation in the crime. - While under detention, Maqueda filed a Motion to Grant Bail in which he stated that he is willing and volunteering to be a State witness in the case. Prosecutor Zarate had a talk with Maqueda and asked him if he was in the company of Salvamante on the day in question in entering the Barkers home. When he got an affirmative answer, Zarate told him he would oppose the motion to bail since Maqueda is the only one on trial. - Ray Dean Salvosa arrived at the Office of the Prosecutor Zarate and obtained permission to talk to Maqueda. Maqueda narrated to Salvosa that Salvamante brought him to Baguio to find a job as a peanut vendor but instead brought him to the Barkers house and told him of his plan. He initially objected but later on agreed to it. - Maqueda put up the defense of denial and alibi. He says: - He claims to have been at the polvoron factory of Minda Castrense. That day, he claims to have been teaching new employees how to make polvoron seasoning. On December 20, 1991, he went home to Gapas, Guinyangan for vacation and ran into Salvamenta, his childhood playmate. They just waved to each other. He again saw Salvamante after Christmas day and Salvamante invited him to go to Calauag. Since he wanted to visit his brother, he agreed. There, Salvamante asked him to accompany him in selling a cassette recorder from Baguio. After that, he never saw Salvamante again. - He was arrested by CAFGU members on March 2. He was told that if he points to Salvamante, he would be freed and would become a state witness, He told them he could attest to Salvamantes sale of the recorder. - Prosecution responded by presenting Fredesminda Castrence, the owner of the factory Maqueda worked in, who testified that she started her business in 30 August 1991, making it impossible for her to have hired Maqueda on 5 July 1991. - The trial court disregarded the testimonies of Mrs. Barker and the maids on Maquedas identification, they decreed a conviction based on the confession and the proof of corpus delicti plus circumstantial evidence. HELD: - The appeal is dismissed. The decision of RTC Benguet to convict Maqueda is affirmed.
P.M.R. Gairanod

PEOPLE v. MACEDA Criminal Procedure - C. Bautista

RATIONALE: - It was wrong for the trial court to hold that the the rights to counsel and against self-incrimination are limited to custodial investigation and do not apply to a person against whom a criminal complaint or information has already been filed. - The trial court made a distinction between an extrajudicial confession --the Sinumpaang Salaysay--and an extrajudicial admision--the verbal admissions to Prosecutor Zarate and Ray Dean Salvosa. A perusal of the Sinumpaang Salaysay shows that it is an extrajudicial admission. - The distinction is made clear in Sections 26 and 33, Rule 130 of the Rules of Court: - Sec. 26: Admission of a party -- The act, declaration or omission of a party as to a relevant fact may be given in evidence against him. - Sec 33. Confession -- The declaration of an accused acknowledging his guilty of the offense charged , or of any offense necessarily included therein, may be given in evidence against him. - In a confession, there is acknowledgement of guilt. The term admission is usually applied in criminal cases to statements of fact by the accused which do not directly involve an acknowledgement of his guilty or of the criminal intent to commit the offense with which he is charged. - A confession is an acknowledgement in express terms, by a party in a criminal case, of his guilty of the crime charged while an admission is a statement by the accused, direct or implied, of facts pertinent to the issue and tending, in connection with proof of other facts, to prove his guilty. An admission is something less than a confession, and is but an acknowledgement of some fact or circumstance which, in itself is sufficient to authorize a conviction. - TC: At the time the Sinumpaang Salaysay was made, Maqueda was already facing charges in court and no longer had the right to remain silent and to counsel but he had a right to refuse to be a witness. And still, he confessed. Thus, the admissibility of the Sinumpaang Salaysay should be tested not under the Constitution (Section 12, Article III) but on the voluntariness of its execution. Voluntariness is presumed so Maqueda has the burden of proving otherwise. - SC: DISAGREE. The exercise of the rights to remain silent and to counsel and to be informed are not confined to that period prior to filing of a criminal complaint or information but available at that stage when a person is under investigation for the commission of an offense. Thus, procedural safeguards still need to be used. - The fact that the framers of our Constitution did not choose to use the term custodial by inserting it between the words under and investigation proves that our Constitution did not adopt in toto the entire fabric of the Miranda doctrine. The second paragraph of Section 20 broadened the application of Miranda by making it applicable to the investigation for the commission of an offense of a person and in custody. - If we follow the TCs theory, police enforcement authorities would have a heyday extracting confessions or admissions from accused persons after they had been
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PEOPLE v. MACEDA Criminal Procedure - C. Bautista

arrested but before they are arraigned because at such stage, the accused are supposedly not entitled to the rights to remain silent and to counsel. - Once a criminal complaint or information is filed in court and the accused is thereby arrested by virtue of a warrant of arrest, he must be delivered to the nearest police station or jail and the arresting officer must make a return of the warrant to the issuing judge, and since the court has already accepted jurisdiction over his person, it would be improper for any public officer or law enforcement agency to investigate him in connection with the commission of the offense for which he is charged. If, nevertheless, he is subjected to such investigation, then Section 12(1), Article III of the Constitution and the jurisprudence thereon must be faithfully complied with. - The Sinumpaang Salaysay of Maqueda taken after his arrest was in violation of his Article III rights. He was not even told of any of his constitutional rights under the said section and the statement was taken in the absence of counsel. - The extrajudicial admissions of Maqueda to Prosecutor Zarate and Ray Dean Salvosa, however, stand on a different footing and are not governed by the exclusionary rules under the Bill of Rights. He made them voluntarily and freely made them to Prosecutor Zarate not in the course of an investigation but in connection with his plea to be used as a state witness. As to Salvosa, he is a private person. The Bill of Rights concerns limitations on the government. - Even if we disregard his extrajudicial admissions, his guilty was established by circumstantial evidence.

P.M.R. Gairanod