People v. Escote

Past midnight on September 28, 1996, Juan Gonzales Escote, Jr. and Victor Acuyan boarded a Five Star bus bound for Bolinao at Camachile, Balintawak. On the highway in Plaridel, Bulacan, they drew handguns, fired upward and announced a hold-up. They took the passengers' money and valuables and the conductor's fare collections. They took the identification card and service gun of SPO1 Jose Manio, Jr., an off-duty police officer riding home. Telling him “Pasensya ka na Pare, papatayin ka namin, baril mo rin ang papatay sa iyo,” they ignored his plea for mercy and shot him six times, killing him. They boasted that killing a man was like killing a chicken, and they got off at an overpass in Pampanga. About a month later, Escote was stopped at a checkpoint in Tarlac. He passed himself off as a policeman using Manio's expired ID, then admitted the robbery. Escote escaped after the prosecution rested and was later rearrested, while Acuyan pleaded alibi. The RTC convicted both of robbery with homicide and imposed death, evidently on a finding of treachery.

1. 1Whether the accused were deprived of their right to cross-examine the bus driver, and whether they were positively identified.
2. 2Whether the crime was robbery with homicide.
3. 3Whether treachery is a generic aggravating circumstance in robbery with homicide, and whether it could be appreciated here.

Robbery with homicide, with the penalty reduced to reclusion perpetua (Callejo, Sr., J., en banc). The right of cross-examination requires only the opportunity to cross-examine. It was waived when defense counsel failed to appear and never moved to recall the driver, and it could not be raised for the first time on appeal. The driver and the conductor had a good look at the accused in a lit bus. Escote's unexplained possession of the victim's ID raised a presumption that he was the author of the crime. No police line-up is legally required. Robbery with homicide requires four elements: the taking of personal property with violence or intimidation, property belonging to another, intent to gain, and homicide, in its generic sense, committed by reason or on the occasion of the robbery. The intent to rob must precede the killing, but the killing may come before, during or after the robbery. All homicides committed on the occasion merge into a single, indivisible felony. Everyone who took part as a principal in the robbery is liable for robbery with homicide unless he tried to prevent the killing. Treachery was present, because the victim was disarmed and shot while pleading and defenseless. Some decisions had refused to apply treachery to this crime against property, but the Court held it a generic aggravating circumstance, following Spanish Supreme Court decisions and commentators. It attaches to the constituent homicide, not the robbery. It is not an element of the crime, not included in its definition and not inherent in it (Article 62), and it binds all who knew of the manner of the killing. But treachery was not alleged in the information. Section 8, Rule 110 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure, being favorable, applied retroactively, so treachery could not raise the penalty. With no modifying circumstance, Article 63 called for reclusion perpetua. The damages were recomputed to include civil indemnity, moral and exemplary damages, actual damages and lost earnings. The bus company's unproven P6,000 claim was replaced with P3,000 temperate damages.