G.R. No. 128089 - PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, VS. DOMINADOR VELASCO ALIAS "ADOR," ACCUSED-.D E C I S I O N - Supreme Court E-Library

Ruling

WHEREFORE, in view of all the foregoing considerations, this Honorable Court hereby finds the accused DOMINADOR VELASCO alias "ADOR" GUILTY beyond reasonable doubt for the crime of Parricide contrary to Article 246 of the Revised Penal Code. The accused is hereby sentenced to suffer the penalty of RECLUSION PERPETUA, indemnify the heirs of the victim in the amount of P50,000.00 and to pay the cost of the proceedings." [4] Elevating the case to this Court, the accused ascribed to the court a quo a sole assigned error; viz : "THE TRIAL COURT ERRED IN DISREGARDING THE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THE FACT THAT THE VICTIM COMMITTED SUICIDE BY POISONING HERSELF AND WAS NOT KILLED BY THE ACCUSED." [5] Accused-appellant denied having pounced upon the victim, claiming that he never left his brother's house from 10 o'clock in the morning up until 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the fateful day, and suggesting that the victim might have opted to take her own life because of the scandal and shame she had put herself into. But not a trace of poison was detected in any part of the victim's body. Even Dr. Villanueva acknowledged the inconclusiveness of his cursory finding that the victim must have taken her own life, his opinion being based mainly on the speculation in the neighborhood that the victim drunk some poisonous substance. He might have actually smelled insecticide in the victim's mouth the day she died; however, he himself conceded that it could have been possible that the substance was just poured through the victim's mouth soon after she breathed her last. Suicide, in any event, was finally ruled out following the results of the histopathological and toxicological examinations on the body of the victim conducted by NBI experts. The body itself had borne witness to the deadly torment it went through which exposed several abrasions and contusions that would completely negate the suicide theory. [6] It should bear to underscore that the individual qualifications of the medico legal officer and forensic biologist, the expert witnesses presented, remained unassailed. Interestingly, the defense failed to place at the witness stand the brother or the sister-in-law of the accused who could have corroborated his alibi , a fatal omission if, indeed, his claim should deserve any weight. No undue bias or ill motive had been attributed to the prosecution witnesses that would have impelled them to falsely testify against the accused and to implicate him in so despicable a deed as parricide. The paucity of such an evidence hardly could support any proposition other than that the witnesses had testified on untarnished truth. [7] Innately, there appears to be great incredulity in the version of the accused. How could a husband merely stand still and endure the illicit sexual congress between his wife and her supposed paramour from beginning to end? How could he just go after his wife's lover when the latter is through with his lovemaking and only after he would have put on h