G.R. No. 160188 , June 21, 2007
Aristotel Valenzuela y Natividad, petitioner, vs. People of the Philippines and Hon. Court of Appeals, respondents.

FACTS

Petitioner Aristotel Valenzuela was convicted of consummated theft by the Regional Trial Court, a conviction affirmed by the Court of Appeals. The undisputed facts established that Valenzuela, wearing a fake identification card, was observed by a security guard repeatedly taking cartons of detergent from inside the SM Super Sale Club supermarket and unloading them in an open parking area where an accomplice waited. After loading the stolen goods into a hailed taxi, the petitioner and his accomplice were intercepted by the security guard as the taxi began to leave the parking area. When asked for a receipt, they fled but were apprehended, and all merchandise was recovered.
At trial, the petitioner did not squarely deny his acts but instead argued that his crime was merely frustrated theft, not consummated. He contended that since he was apprehended within the supermarket’s open parking area—a space still under the control of the establishment’s security—he was never able to freely dispose of the stolen items. His theory relied on old Court of Appeals rulings recognizing frustrated theft, a position never explicitly affirmed by the Supreme Court.

ISSUE

Whether the crime committed by the petitioner is consummated theft or merely frustrated theft.

RULING

The Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Tinga, ruled that the crime was consummated theft. The Court abandoned the theory of frustrated theft under the Revised Penal Code, holding that theft is consummated from the moment the offender gains possession of the personal property with intent to gain. The act of “taking” or “apoderamiento” is a consummating act, not a merely preparatory or executory one.
The legal logic is anchored on the nature of theft as a crime against property. The felony is complete upon the unlawful taking of the property. The offender’s subsequent acts of carrying the property away or his ability to freely dispose of it are not essential elements of the crime. The law does not require that the thief successfully remove the property from the owner’s premises or achieve absolute control; it only requires that the property is taken from the owner’s possession without consent. In this case, Valenzuela had already performed the acts of taking and moving the detergent out of the supermarket building and into the parking lot, thereby depriving the owner of its possession. His apprehension before he could leave the SM complex does not downgrade the crime to a frustrated stage, as the deprivation of possession had already been accomplished. The recovery of the items is merely a mitigating circumstance of voluntary restitution, not a reclassification of the felony’s stage. Thus, his conviction for consummated theft stands.