Perverse crime

In crimes where the victim dies and thus silenced forever and never again could narrate the horrendousness of the crime committed like the crime of rape with homicide, what evidence will the courts rely on? What are the requirements in order that this evidence can be admitted to resolve the case? These are the questions answered in this case of Tonyo

Tonyo is a 33-year-old man with a blind right eye and a left arm amputated two inches below the elbow and was thus known in their neighborhood as “putol.” He came from another province and transferred residence when he started to live with Celia a 30-year-old widow with four children. Their common law relationship however lasted for only two months as Tonyo left Celia and lived-in with another woman, Remy in a house about 30 meters away from Celia’s house.

About six months after Tonyo and Celia separated, and while Tony’s paramour Medy went to a nearby city, at about 2 p.m., Tonyo saw three of Celia’s children frolicking in the street from the second floor untenanted portion of his house. He beckoned one of the children, Angel, then 11 years old, to come up the house. Obediently, Angel went up the house as Tonyo gestured her two siblings, 8 years old Aries and 6 years old Lita to leave. So Aries and Lita left the place.

At about 4 p.m., Celia noticed that Angel had not yet come home. When she asked Aries and Lita on her whereabouts, they could not answer her. So Celia scoured the neighborhood looking for Angel but did not find her. When she returned home and inquired from Aries where they left their sister that afternoon, Aries already recalled and told her that Tonyo called Angel to his house.

Since Tonyo was not in his house, Celia searched for him with the help of her aunt Cita. They saw him walking along the railroad tracks and asked him if he had seen Angel. But Tonyo gave a negative answer. So Celia and Cita proceeded to Tonyo’s house where they discovered Angel lying on the bamboo floor covered by a mat. Removing the cover, they found her dead, with blood stains in front and back of her dress, arms and legs spread apart and without a panty and with a sweatshirt inserted on her vagina. Realizing what happened, Celia cried in deep anguish as she embraced the cold and lifeless body of her daughter.

The whole neighborhood heard about the incident and started to flock at the second floor of the house. When the town police chief received a report about the dead body of a young girl, he fetched the municipal judge and the health officer and went to the house where the health officer conducted a post mortem examination and found that Angel was raped and strangled to death. While the health officer was examining Angel, the police chief spotted Tonyo among the people who flocked there, picked him up and brought him to a restaurant where he questioned him and later brought him to the police headquarters. When confronted by Celia and Aries Tonyo confessed in writing that he raped and killed Angel by squeezing her neck with his two knees until she ran out of breath. The following morning, the judge conducted a preliminary examination of Tonyo which was reduced in writing wherein Tonyo reiterated his confession.

So, he was charged with rape with homicide. While no one saw the commission of the crime, the lower court found Tonyo guilty beyond reasonable doubt on the strength not only of his statement before the Municipal Judge admitting the authorship of the macabre crime but also on the evidence of the corpus delicti and the presence of a web of circumstantial evidence based on the testimony of Celia, Aries, the Health Officer and the Police Chief and the laundress who washed the stained pants of Tonyo.

Since Tonyo was sentenced to death, the lower court’s decision was automatically reviewed by the Supreme Court where Tonyo repudiated his confession by claiming that he was maltreated by the police in doing so. He also contended that the circumstantial evidence failed to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt because when the crime occurred he was not in the house but drinking and gambling with friends until about ten p.m. when he reached his house and was informed that somebody was found dead therein.

But the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the lower court finding him guilty of rape with homicide and sentencing him to death. The alleged maltreatment was not the immediate and proximate cause of his confession. He signed the statement only after the police chief assured him of aid. He even reiterated his admission of guilt during the preliminary investigation by the Municipal judge and entered a plea of “guilty” when arraigned thereby confirming what he had said during the preliminary investigation.

Even without the confession and plea of guilt, the following circumstantial evidence duly proven all point to his guilt: his familiarity with Celia’s children; the presence of the children in front of his house that afternoon; the presence of Tonyo watching those children playing; Angel going up to the house when asked by Tonyo as last seen by her brother Aries; Angel was raped and killed by strangulation at the second floor; the bloody trousers of Tonyo and the stains thereon.

The SC thus affirmed the decision of the lower court and the death sentence since Angel is below twelve years of age. (People vs. Magtira, G.R. L-28255, November 25, 1983)

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