Digest Case on Treason

G.R. No. L-2317    December 12, 1951 THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, plaintiff-appellee, vs.MARCELO GOROSPE, defendant-appellant.

FACTS:, The appellants was found guilty  for treason on four counts. On Counts 2 and 3 sentenced to 12 years and one day of reclusion temporal and to pay a fine of P1,000 and the costs. There is no finding or judgment on Counts 1 and 4 and these will be left out in this decision.

Evidence of the prosecutions provided that:

Count 2.—On the evening of December 10, 1944, the appellant, an Aringay, La Union, municipal policeman, summoned Cipriano Apolinar, Bruno Ronquillo, Severo Roldan and three other inhabitants to the town cemetary and commanded them to dig three graves, which they did in his presence. After the graves had been made, Liling Mapalo and Valeraino Parentela, also policeman, arrived with four prisoners whose hands were tied behind their backs. Apolinar, Ronquillo and Roldan were unable to recognize the prisoners except one, Dominador Dulay. The accused made each of two prisoners stand on the edge of each of two of the graves and the other two prisoners on the edge of the third grave; and, telling them they were guerillas, he stabbed them into the pits. Thereafter the graves were refilled with earth on defendant's orders.

Count 3.—On December 15, the same witnesses were gain ordered by the defendant to dig a grave at the cemetary, while Parental and Mapalo brought Federico Abellera, hands bound at the back, when the work had been finished. Like the first mentioned victims, Abellera was placed on his feet close to the grave, face forward, by the accused, with a sharp bolo and Abellera timbled into the hole. Seeing that Abellera was still alive, the appellant jumped after him and gave a finishing blow. Abellera, like those slain five days before, was suspected of being a guerilla.

Theses killings, testified to by the three eye-witnesses, constituted over acts. In addition to the grave diggers' testimony that Gorospe told the victims they were to be executed because they were guerillas, proof of adherence to the enemy, which is not comprehended by the two witness principle, was supplied by Federico Galano.

Galano swore that he was seized on December 6 by three policemen in barrio Sto. Rosario, Aringay, and taken to the municipal building, hence to the Japanese garrison located at the approach of the bridge. When the witness arrived with his captors in the garrison, Mariano Carreon and Guillermo Mabanta were already there as prisoners. The next day Dominador Dulay was brought in by a policeman and two civilians whom Galano did not know, and on the third day, Querubin Bautista and Gerson Amigo were added to the number of persons under arrest. These prisoners were maltreated by policemen from Agoo and also by Marcelo Gorospe. The accused beat them up because they would not admit that they were guerillas. Gorospe, according to Galano, told the prisoners: "You confess, I know that you are guerillas and you are the ones who killed Sevilla." Galano himself, he declared, was maltreated by Gorospe and several other policemen and by Japanese soldiers, charged with being in the underground movement.

The defendant's testimony,constituted general denial that he liquidated the guerilla suspects above mentioned. This denial squarely put in issue the prosecution witnesses' credibility.

The  People's Court found beyond doubt that the defendant committed the acts narrated by the witnesses, and that the record discloses no circumstances of any weight which warrants reversal or modification of the lower court's finding. Defense counsel himself does not seem to dispute the truth of the accusation that the defendant slew Abellera, Dulay and three others. The so-called discrepancies and inconsistencies on which appellant's brief dwells, relate to what that Government witnesses said were Gorope's remarks to the deceased, namely, that they were guerillas; and it would seem that the point the defense wants to make is, not that the defendant did not the slaying but that the elements of treason have not been shown. If this is the underlying aim of the argument, the appellant does not stand to profit by the effort. Rather the contrary. Stripped of treasonable intention, the killings would be five plain murders for each of which three should be a separate penalty.

ISSUE: Whether or not the accused defendants should be granted a lesser sentence?

HELD” The Supreme Court was satisfied that as on the fact of killing, Galano told substantially the truth when he stated that the appellant frequented the Japanese garrison and had a part in rounding up the suspects, and that Gorospe maltreated them in the Japanese headquarters. This is the same with  other witnesses' testimony that the defendant informed the prisoners that they were to be executed because of alleged subversive activities in which they had been engaged. That there is not sufficient evidence that those unfortunate men were in fact guerillas, as counsel stresses, is immaterail.  In addressing the  mitigating circumstances, it was found to be lack of instruction.

The defendant had finished third grade, and the fact that he was a regularly appointed member of the police force and that fact that of all the policemen who intervened in the arrest and execution of the five deceased he played the leading and most conspicious role, are eloquent refutation of the court's finding on the degree of the appellant's education and intelligence. The defendant's stoicism to our mind was not a manifestation of mental weakness or infirmity but rather of the strong will and cool head that he had demonstrated by his conduct. Did he not chide one of his fellow-policemen for his refusal or reluctance to act the part of executioner? And was it not be who recruited grave diggers and supervised their work besides performing the horrible business personality?

Here the Supreme Court asessed in the appealed decision is therefore too light. It should be reclusion perpetua, and this is the penalty, besides P1,000 fine, that is hereby imposed with costs.