G.R. No. L-11077; August 23, 1966
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, plaintiff and appellee, vs. LI BUN JUAN alias BUN HUAN, ET AL., defendants and appellants.

FACTS

An information for murder was filed in connection with the killing of Dr. Yu Kiatming on the evening of March 13, 1946. The case (Criminal Case No. 24342) was jointly tried with another murder case (Criminal Case No. 24530). After the prosecution rested, the defendants in Criminal Case No. 24530 and the defendant Li Bun Juan in Criminal Case No. 24342 filed motions to dismiss for insufficiency of evidence. The motion in the first case was granted, acquitting those defendants. Li Bun Juan’s motion was denied. After trial, the court convicted Li Bun Juan and Sy Top of murder and acquitted Ong Tong To. Sy Top later withdrew his appeal, leaving Li Bun Juan as the sole appellant. The prosecution evidence established that Dr. Yu was shot and killed at his home. His wife, Ong Hoc, witnessed a small man running away and was herself wounded when she hit the assailant with a chair. The police investigation initially yielded no leads until Li Bun Juan was arrested on October 22, 1953, for acting suspiciously. A search revealed a note in Chinese characters, which, upon translation, referred to a .45 caliber pistol used in Dr. Yu’s murder. Confronted with this, Li Bun Juan confessed to being one of the killers. He executed three separate extra-judicial confessions on October 24, November 7, and November 8, 1953, which were subscribed and sworn to before notaries public. After Sy Top’s arrest, a tape-recorded conversation between him and Li Bun Juan corroborated the confessions. Appellant contends his confessions were extracted through violence and intimidation and that the trial court erred in not considering his minority (14 years, 9 months, and 9 days old at the time of the crime) as a mitigating circumstance.

ISSUE

1. Whether the extra-judicial confessions of Li Bun Juan were voluntarily executed and sufficient to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
2. Whether the trial court erred in not considering appellant’s minority at the time of the crime’s commission as a mitigating circumstance in the imposition of the penalty.

RULING

1. The extra-judicial confessions were voluntarily executed and sufficient for conviction. The trial court’s conclusion on the voluntary character of the confessions, based on the testimonies of Patrolmen Ponce and Orpiano and the notaries public, will not be disturbed absent a showing that it overlooked, misunderstood, or misconstrued facts of weight. The principle of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus is not absolute; the court may believe a witness’s testimony on some facts and disbelieve it on others. The policemen’s testimony regarding the execution of appellant’s confessions was accepted as truthful.
2. The trial court erred in not considering appellant’s minority. The Solicitor General agreed that the privileged mitigating circumstance of minority was present. Consequently, the penalty must be modified. The penalty for murder is reclusion temporal in its maximum period to death. With the mitigating circumstance of minority, the penalty next lower in degree is prision mayor in its maximum period to reclusion temporal in its medium period. Applying the Indeterminate Sentence Law, the penalty is reduced to an indeterminate penalty of not less than ten years of prision mayor nor more than twelve years and one day of reclusion temporal. The appealed judgment is affirmed in all other respects.