G.R. No. 224889. October 19, 2016.
PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS. MC HENRY SUAREZ Y ZURITA, JOHN JOSEPH RAVENA Y ACOSTA AND JOHN PAUL VICENCIO Y BARRANCO, ACCUSED-APPELLANTS.

FACTS

Accused-appellants Mc Henry Suarez, John Joseph Ravena, and John Paul Vicencio were charged with Murder for the stabbing death of Roger Setera. The prosecution evidence established that on February 2, 2011, the appellants were at a videoke bar in Iloilo. After a series of confrontational incidents inside and just outside the bar, the victim, Roger Setera, who was also at the establishment, shouted at the group to go home. The appellants then gestured for Setera to approach them. When he did, Suarez and Vicencio simultaneously boxed him. While Setera was parrying these frontal attacks, Ravena, positioned behind him, delivered a single stab wound to his back. The appellants then fled. The victim was brought to the hospital but died the following morning from the injury, which had lacerated his kidney.
The defense presented alibis and denial, claiming they were elsewhere during the incident. The Regional Trial Court convicted them of Murder, qualified by treachery, and sentenced them to reclusion perpetua. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. The appellants elevated the case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the qualifying circumstance of treachery was not proven beyond reasonable doubt.

ISSUE

Whether the crime committed was Murder qualified by treachery or the lesser crime of Homicide.

RULING

The Supreme Court modified the lower courts’ rulings and found the appellants guilty of Homicide, not Murder. The legal logic hinges on the requisite proof for the qualifying circumstance of treachery (alevosia). For treachery to qualify a killing to Murder, two conditions must concur: (1) the employment of means of execution that gives the person attacked no opportunity to defend himself or retaliate; and (2) the deliberate and conscious adoption of such means. The Court found the prosecution failed to prove the second element.
The evidence showed the attack was not preconceived or deliberately adopted to ensure the execution without risk to the assailants. The incident originated from a prior verbal altercation and a series of heated exchanges at the bar. The victim himself approached the appellants after they beckoned him, indicating a face-to-face confrontation. While the stab wound was delivered from behind, this occurred while the victim was actively engaged in parrying blows from Suarez and Vicencio in front of him. The setting was a sudden, close-quarters melee that emerged from a heated argument, not a deliberately planned assault where the mode of attack was consciously chosen to eliminate any risk of defense. Thus, the qualifying circumstance of treachery was not established. However, the appellants’ collective acts of boxing and stabbing the victim directly caused his death, establishing criminal liability for the lesser offense of Homicide. The Court sentenced each appellant to an indeterminate penalty and ordered them to pay civil indemnity, moral damages, and actual damages to the victim’s heirs.