Title
People vs. Nazario y Enriquez
Case
G.R. No. L-1217
Decision Date
Sep 22, 1947
Appellant convicted of theft, appealed, pleaded guilty, then sought to withdraw plea; Court denied withdrawal, ruled plea not mitigating.
mitigating circumstance
discretion of court
simple theft
A

Case Summary (G.R. No. 192474)

Factual Background

In the Municipal Court of Manila, the appellant was tried for qualified theft and convicted of only simple theft. He received a sentence of four months and one day of arresto mayor and was ordered to pay the costs. The appellant then appealed to the Court of First Instance of Manila, where he first entered a plea of not guilty but later withdrew it and pleaded guilty to simple theft. He was then sentenced in the Court of First Instance to the same penalty imposed by the Municipal Court.

After he had filed a notice of appeal, the appellant filed a motion asking the Court of First Instance to set aside the judgment, to allow him to withdraw his plea of guilty and substitute his former plea of not guilty, and to conduct a new trial. The record, as described in the majority opinion, showed that the Court of First Instance took no action on this motion. In his appeal before the Supreme Court, the appellant argued that his motion should have been granted.

Issues Raised on Appeal

The case presented two principal questions. First, whether the Court of First Instance committed reversible error when it did not grant the appellant’s motion to withdraw his plea of guilty and to hold a new trial. Second, whether the appellant’s guilty plea entered upon appeal could be considered as a mitigating circumstance under Article 13, subsection 7 of the Revised Penal Code.

The Parties’ Contentions

The appellant maintained that his plea of guilty on appeal should have been withdrawn and that a new trial should have been held. He also contended that the trial court should have treated his guilty plea as a mitigating circumstance. In this regard, the majority noted that the appellant’s mitigation argument raised a question already addressed by earlier jurisprudence that had treated such a plea entered upon appeal as not mitigating.

The Government’s position, as reflected in the majority discussion, supported the view that the withdrawal of the plea was not genuine or timely. The majority also addressed and discounted the appellant’s effort to characterize his circumstances as involving newly discovered evidence, pointing to the content and nature of the supporting affidavit.

Discussion on Withdrawal of the Plea of Guilty

The Supreme Court anchored the first issue on Section 6 of Rule 114, which provides that if a judgment of conviction has been entered on a plea of guilty that has not yet become final, “the court may set aside such judgment, and allow a plea of not guilty,” or, with the consent of the fiscal, allow a guilty plea to a lesser offense necessarily included in the charge.

Applying this standard, the majority held that the Court of First Instance’s failure to allow the appellant’s withdrawal of his plea of guilty amounted to the exercise of a “clearly discretionary power” and was warranted by the circumstances of the case. The Court stressed that the appellant could not be characterized as acting ignorantly or hastily. It emphasized that he was assisted by an attorney de oficio and that, after trial and conviction in the Municipal Court, he must have been sufficiently conversant with his case when he was arraigned in the Court of First Instance upon appeal.

The majority further reasoned that the timing and stated basis for withdrawal suggested a colorable afterthought. It observed that the appellant sought withdrawal after filing a notice of appeal and that the motion relied on the allegation that principal prosecution witnesses had already gone to the United States, an assertion the majority treated as implying lack of genuine grounds at the material time. The Court also evaluated the affidavit submitted in support of the motion and stated that its assertions of innocence were conclusory and could not outweigh the appellant’s own admission.

Mitigating Circumstance of Voluntary Confession

On the second issue, the appellant urged that his plea of guilty should mitigate his liability. The majority rejected this contention by invoking an established rule: that a plea of guilty entered upon appeal in the Court of First Instance could not be considered a mitigating circumstance. The majority cited prior cases—People vs. Hermino (64 Phil., 403), People vs. Bawasanta (64 Phil., 409), People vs. Javier (64 Phil., 413), People vs. Cariaga (G. R. No. 46245, October 18, 1938), and People vs. Jose (68 Phil., 396)—as authority for the doctrine.

The majority nevertheless “constrained” itself to restate the reasons supporting adherence to the rule, and it enumerated considerations for refusing mitigation. First, it treated the rationale for a plea-of-guilty mitigation as the presence of repentance and moral disposition favorable to reform, coupled with submission to law, and it concluded that such repentance could not be attributed to the appellant because he had not pleaded guilty in the competent court of origin (the Municipal Court) and had instead appealed to the Court of First Instance and then to the Supreme Court.

Second, the majority warned that the contrary approach would open the door to cases where defendants intentionally abstain from pleading guilty in the justice of the peace or municipal court in the hope of acquittal, and only after conviction on appeal plead guilty to obtain the mitigating benefit. It held that in such instances the spontaneous willingness to admit the offense, which the mitigating circumstance rewards, would be absent.

Third, while recognizing that a trial de novo in the Court of First Instance technically means a trial with the same manner, effect, and issues as in the Municipal Court, the majority clarified that this did not preclude inquiry into whether the defendant’s plea of guilty was voluntary for the purpose of determining the presence of the mitigating circumstance.

Fourth, the majority reasoned that an accused would not plead guilty unless he had committed the offense charged, and therefore it found no sense or reason in allowing an accused to be tried and convicted in the lower court on a plea of not guilty before he could claim, upon discovery for the first time in the Court of First Instance, that he was in fact the author of the offense.

Majority Disposition

With these considerations, the Supreme Court affirmed the appealed judgment. It held that the Court of First Instance acted within its discretion in not allowing the withdrawal of the guilty plea. It also held that the guilty plea entered upon appeal could not be treated as a mitigating circumstance. The judgment was therefore affirmed with costs against the appellant.

Separate Opinions: Dissent on Withdrawal and Mitigation

Justice Hilado concurred in the existence of conviction but dissented on the issue of mitigation. He maintained that the appellant’s guilty plea before the Court of First Instance, prior to the presentation of evidence for the prosecution, should have been appreciated as a mitigating circumstance under Article 13, No. 7, of the Revised Penal Code. He reasoned that the statutory provision was clear and did not make the distinction drawn by the majority between pleas entered in the original trial court and those entered on appeal.

Justice Moran, C.J., joined Justice Hilado’s view.

Justice Briones also dissented on the miti

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