G.R. No. L-8228; April 29, 1959
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, plaintiff-appellee, vs. DOMINADOR M. CAMERINO, ET AL., defendants. MANUEL PAKINGAN, CECILIO ESGUERRA AND MARCELINO ESGUERRA, defendants-appellants.

FACTS

An amended information charged multiple individuals with murder for the death of Jacinto Morales. After trial, the Court of First Instance of Cavite acquitted several defendants but convicted appellants Manuel Pakingan, Cecilio Esguerra, and Marcelino Esguerra of murder. The evidence for the prosecution established that around 11:30 a.m. on Election Day, November 10, 1953, about thirty armed men in three jeeps stopped near the house of Zoilo Morales in Bacoor, Cavite. A sedan car arrived, and three men reported to Governor Camerino inside that “the vice is already dead.” The Governor, angered, ordered an attack, prompting the armed men to fire at Zoilo Morales’s house. Jacinto Morales was hit, taken to the hospital, and died that afternoon from a gunshot wound. Prosecution witness Eulogio San Jose testified that he saw the appellants among the armed men firing at the house. However, after the prosecution rested, San Jose was presented by the defense and recanted his testimony, claiming he was not present during the incident and had been coerced by Zoilo Morales and Captain Adamos to testify falsely. The appellants contended that San Jose’s contradictory testimonies could not support a conviction.

ISSUE

Whether the trial court correctly relied on the initial testimony of Eulogio San Jose to convict the appellants of murder despite his subsequent recantation.

RULING

Yes, the trial court’s judgment was affirmed. The Court held that when a witness gives two contradictory testimonies, the court may rely on the testimony it believes was given freely and voluntarily, considering all circumstances. The Court found that San Jose recanted his initial testimony out of fear of reprisal from the appellants, who were on bail. The appellants, as henchmen of Governor Camerino, had a motive to attack the house of Zoilo Morales, a Nacionalista Party leader, to avenge the death of a Liberal Party vice-mayor earlier that day. The simultaneous firing by the band of armed men, including the appellants, at the house demonstrated conspiracy. The crime was murder qualified by treachery and aggravated by the aid of armed men. The penalty prescribed was reclusion temporal maximum to death. With no mitigating circumstance to offset the aggravating circumstance, the maximum penalty of death would apply, but for lack of sufficient votes, the penalty of life imprisonment imposed by the trial court was affirmed.