Case Digest (G.R. No. L-49430)
Facts:
People of the Philippines v. Belinda Lora y Vequizo alias Lorena Sumilew, G.R. No. L-49430, March 30, 1982, the Supreme Court En Banc, Per Curiam.The accused, Belinda Lora y Vequizo (alias Lorena Sumilew), was charged in the Court of First Instance of Davao in an amended information for serious illegal detention with murder (Art. 267 in relation to Arts. 248 and 48, Revised Penal Code). The trial court appointed counsel for the accused, postponed arraignment to allow counsel to study the charge, and thereafter the accused, assisted by counsel, pleaded guilty in her native Visayan dialect. The trial judge accepted the guilty plea and directed the prosecution to present evidence; defense proposed to present evidence only on mitigating circumstances.
The prosecution presented eight witnesses (including the parents, witnesses to the ransom calls and arresting officers, and the medico-legal witness). The factual matrix, undisputed at trial, was that Lora was employed as a housemaid for spouses Ricardo and Myrna Yap beginning May 27, 1975, and was entrusted to look after their three-year-old son, Oliver. On May 28 a ransom note demanding P3,000 was found; subsequent telephone instructions to deliver marked money were received; the family followed leads and located and arrested the accused on May 29 with currency bearing the victim-mother’s initials. On May 30 the child’s body was discovered in a cigarette carton in the family bodega: mouth gagged with stockings, head down, legs protruding, and autopsy showed death by asphyxia due to suffocation, the pathologist opining death occurred about three days before the autopsy.
At trial the accused admitted gagging and placing the child in the box but testified only in mitigation, claiming lack of intent to kill and pleading for life imprisonment because she had children of her own. The trial court found the accused guilty of the complex crime of serious illegal detention with murder and imposed the death penalty (among other penalties). Because of the imposition of death, the case came to the Supreme Court on automatic review.
The Supreme Court, upon automatic review, found the accused’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt but disagreed with the trial court’s characterization of the offense as kidnapping with murder. The Court concluded the proper offense was murder qualified by treachery, not the complex crime of kidnapping with murder, because the acts of gagging and stuffing the child into a box were means to effectuate an immediate killing rather than an appreciable detention for ransom. The Court found three aggravating circumstances (lack of respect due to the victim’s tender age, cruelty, and abuse of confidence) and only the single mitigating circumstance of a voluntary plea of guilty, and therefore affirmed the imposition of the death penalty as mod...(Pro-only)
Issues:
- Was the trial court correct in convicting the accused of the complex crime of serious illegal detention (kidnapping) with murder?
- If the correct crime is murder, do the aggravating and mitigating circumstances warrant confirmation of th...(Pro-only)
Ruling:
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Ratio:
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Doctrine:
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