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People vs. Olarbe (2018)

Citation:

G.R. No. 227421, July 23, 2018

Plaintiff-appellee

: PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES

Accused-appellants

: RODOLFO OLARBE Y BALIHANGO

Ponente

: Bersamin (Third Division)

Topic

: Criminal Law

SUMMARY

: The SC ruled that the RTC and CA

erred in not appreciating accused’s invocation of self -defense and defense of stranger.

DOCTRINE

: The indispensable requisite for either of these justifying circumstances is that the victim must have
mounted an unlawful aggression against the accused or the stranger. Without such unlawful
aggression, the accused is not entitled to the justifying circumstance. ---Unlawful aggression on the
part of the victim is the primordial element of the justifying circumstance of self-defense. Without
unlawful aggression, there can be no justified killing in defense of oneself. The test for the presence
of unlawful aggression under the circumstances is whether the aggression from the victim put in real
peril the life or personal safety of the person defending himself; the peril must not be an imagined or
imaginary threat. Accordingly, the accused must establish the concurrence of three elements of
unlawful aggression, namely: (a) there must be a physical or material attack or assault; (b) the attack
or assault must be actual, or, at least, imminent; and (c) the attack or assault must be unlawful.
Unlawful aggression is of two kinds: (a) actual or material unlawful aggression; and (b) imminent
unlawful aggression. Actual or material unlawful aggression means an attack with physical force or
with a weapon, an offensive act that positively determines the intent of the aggressor to cause the
injury. Imminent unlawful aggression means an attack that is impending or at the point of
happening; it must not consist in a mere threatening attitude, nor must it be merely imaginary, but
must be offensive and positively strong (like aiming a revolver at another with intent to shoot or
opening a knife and making a motion as if to attack). Imminent unlawful aggression must not be a
mere threatening attitude of the victim, such as pressing his right hand to his hip where a revolver
was holstered, accompanied by an angry countenance, or like aiming to throw a pot.---Judges should
assiduously sift the records, carefully analyze the evidence, and reach conclusions that are natural
and reasonable.---In judging pleas of self-defense and defense of stranger, the courts should not
demand that the accused conduct himself with the poise of a person not under imminent threat of
fatal harm. He had no time to reflect and to reason out his responses. He had to be quick, and his
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responses should be commensurate to the imminent harm. This is the only way to judge him, for the
law of nature - the foundation of the privilege to use all reasonable means to repel an aggression
that endangers one's own life and the lives of others - did not require him to use
unerring judgment when he had the reasonable grounds to believe himself in apparent
danger of losing his life or suffering great bodily injury. The test is whether his subjective belief as to
the imminence and seriousness of the danger was reasonable or not, and the reasonableness of his
belief must be viewed from his standpoint at the time he acted. The right of a person to take life in
self-defense arises from his belief in the necessity for doing so; and his belief and the reasonableness
thereof are to be judged in the light of the circumstances as they then appeared to him, not in the
light of circumstances as they would appear to others or based on the belief that others may or
might entertain as to the nature and imminence of the danger and the necessity to kill.---Reasonable
necessity of the means employed to repel the unlawful aggression does not mean absolute
necessity. It must be assumed that one who is assaulted cannot have sufficient tranquility of mind to
think, calculate and make comparisons that can easily be made in the calmness of reason. The law
requires rational necessity, not indispensable need. In each particular case, it is necessary to judge
the relative necessity, whether more or less imperative, in. accordance with the rules of rational
logic. The accused may be given the benefit of any reasonable doubt as to whether or not he
employed rational means to repel the aggression. 

 In determining the reasonable necessity of the means employed, the courts may also look .at and
consider the number of wounds inflicted. A large number of wounds inflicted on the victim can
indicate a determined effort on the part of the accused to kill the victim and may belie the
reasonableness of the means adopted to prevent or repel an unlawful act of an aggressor. The
courts ought to remember that a person who is assaulted has neither the time nor the sufficient
tranquility of mind to think, calculate and choose the weapon to be used. For, in emergencies of this
kind, human nature does not act upon processes of formal reason but in obedience to the instinct of
self-preservation; and when itis apparent that a person has reasonably acted upon this instinct, it is
the duty of the courts to hold the actor not responsible in law for the consequences. Verily, the law
requires rational equivalence, not material commensurability.

FACTS

: On that fateful night of May 7, 2006. Arca, armed with the rifle (described as an air gun converted
into a caliber .22) and the bolo, we to the house of Olarbe towards midnight. The latter and his
household re already slumbering, but were roused from bed because Arca fired his gun and was
loudly shouting,

Mga putang inaninyo, pagpapatayin ko kayo

. Thereafter, Arca forcibly entered Olarbe's house. Olarbe managed to the gun of  Arca, and they
struggled for control of it. Upon wresting the gun from Arca, Olarbe fired at him, causing him to
totter. But Arca next took out the bolo from his waist and charged at Olarbe's common-law spouse.
This forced Olarbe to fight for possession of the bolo, and upon seizing the bolo, he hacked Arca with
it. On 8 May 2006 at around 12:30 o'clock midnight, OLARBE voluntarily surrendered to police
officers SPO2Vivencio Aliazas, PO3 Ricardo Cruz and PO1 William Cortez at the Police Station of
Luisiana, Laguna. OLARBE informed them that he happened to have killed Romeo Arca (Arca) in Sitio
Pananim, Luisiana, Laguna. Forthwith, OLARBE was booked, arrested and detained at the police
station. Thereafter, the police officers proceeded to the crime scene and found the lifeless body of
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Arca with several wounds and the bolo used by OLARBE in killing him. The Death Certificate revealed
that Arca's antecedent cause of death was gunshot wounds and his immediate cause of death was
hacked wounds. For his part, OLARBE invoked self-defense and avowed - On the fateful incident, he
and his wife Juliet were sleeping in their house in Barangay San Antonio, Sitio Pananim, Luisiana,
Laguna. Suddenly they were awakened by the sound of a gunshot and shouting from Arca who
appeared to be drunk. Arca was holding a rifle (an air gun converted to a caliber .22) and shouted
"mga putang ina ninyo, pagpapatayin ko kayo." Then, Arca forcibly entered their house and aimed
the gun at them. OLARBE immediately grabbed the gun from him and they grappled for its
possession. OLARBE managed to wrest the gun away from Arca. In a jiff, OLARBE shot Arca causing
the latter to lean sideward ("napahilig"). Nevertheless, Arca managed to get his bolo from his waist
and continued to attack them. OLARBE grabbed the bolo and in their struggle for its possession, they
reached the outer portion of the house. OLARBE was able to wrestle the bolo and instantly, he
hacked Arca. After the killing incident, OLARBE voluntarily surrendered to the police authorities The
RTC pronounced him guilty of murder as charged. CA affirmed. Only Olarbe's account of the incident
existed in the records.

ISSUES

 WoN the CA erred in disregarding accused’s invocation of self -defense

  YES. To start with, there was no credible showing that the shot to the head had rendered Arca too
weak to draw the bolo and to carry on with his aggression in the manner described by Olarbe. The
conclusion of the RTC and the CA thereon was obviously speculative. Secondly, the State did not
demonstrate that the shot from the airgun converted to .22 caliber fired at close range sufficed to
disable Arca from further attacking with his bolo.

Without such demonstration, the RTC and the CA clearly indulged in pure speculation. Thirdly,
nothing in the record indicated Arca’s physical condition at the time of the incident. How could the
CA then reliably conclude that he could not have mounted the bolo assault? And, lastly, to rule out
any further aggression by Arca with his bolo after the shot in the head was again speculative. On the
other hand, our substantial judicial experience instructs that an armed person boldly seeking
to assault others - like Arca -would have enough adrenaline to enable him to persist on his assault
despite sustaining a wound that might otherwise be disabling.

 To us, Olarbe's account of what did happen on that fateful night was highly plausible. At the
minimum, the details and sequence of the events therein described conformed to human
experience and the natural course of things. Armed with both the gun and the bolo, Acra not only
disturbed Olarbe's peace but physically invaded the sanctity of latter's home at midnight. Given that
the aggression by Arca was unprovoked on the part of Olarbe, and with no other person disputing
the latter's account, we should easily see and understand why Olarbe would feel that his and his
common-law spouse's lives had been put in extreme peril.

 In addition, Olarbe's conduct following the killing of Arca - of voluntarily surrendering himself to the

police authorities immediately after the killing (i.e.,  at around 12:30 o'clock in the early morning of
May 8, 2006), and reporting his participation in the killing of Arca to the police authorities -bolstered
his pleas of having acted in legitimate self-defense and legitimate defense of his common-law
spouse. Such conduct manifested innocence.
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We find that Arca committed continuous and persistent unlawful aggression against Olarbe and his

common-law spouse that lasted from the moment he forcibly barged into the house and brandished
his gun until he assaulted Olarbe's common-law spouse with the bolo. Such armed assault was not a
mere threatening act. Olarbe was justified in believing his and his common-law spouse's lives to be
in extreme danger from Arca who had just fired his gun in anger outside their home and whose
threats to kill could not be considered idle in the light of his having forced himself upon their home.
The imminent threat to life was positively strong enough to induce Olarbe to act promptly to repel
the unlawful and unprovoked aggression. For Olarbe to hesitate to act as he had done would have
cost him his own life. Area's being dispossessed of his gun did not terminate the aggression, for,
although he had been hit on the head, he quickly reached for the bolo and turned his assault
towards Olarbe's common-law spouse. Olarbe was again forced to struggle for