G.R. No. 42924; March 12, 1935
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, plaintiff-appellee, vs. ANSELMO MORALES (alias ARSENIO PABLO), defendant-appellant.

FACTS

The appellant, Anselmo Morales, was charged with estafa for falsely representing himself as a physician, diagnosing Remedios Suarez’s ailment, receiving P3 from her to purchase medicine, and then appropriating the money. The information also alleged he was a habitual delinquent, having been convicted five times for estafa, with the current offense committed within ten years from his last conviction. The appellant pleaded guilty to the estafa charge. The trial court convicted him and imposed the principal penalty for estafa and an additional ten-year penalty for habitual delinquency.

ISSUE

Whether the appellant’s plea of guilty to the estafa charge also constituted a valid admission of the habitual delinquency allegation, warranting the imposition of the additional penalty.

RULING

No. The Supreme Court modified the judgment, deleting the additional penalty for habitual delinquency. The plea of guilty admits all material allegations, but the information was defective. It failed to allege the specific date of the appellant’s last conviction or release, merely stating a conclusion that the crime was committed within ten years from that date. The law requires the subsequent conviction to occur within ten years from release or last conviction, not the commission of the crime. Furthermore, the record showed his five prior convictions occurred on the same day, which under prevailing jurisprudence counts as only one conviction for determining habitual delinquency. Thus, the appellant was not a habitual delinquent but a recidivist. Considering the estafa penalty under Article 315(2)(a) of the Revised Penal Code and offsetting the aggravating circumstance of recidivism with the mitigating circumstance of plea of guilty, the Court imposed a modified penalty of three months and eleven days of arresto mayor.

AI Generated by Armztrong.