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ANNOTATION

HOMICIDE “BY REASON OR ON THE OCCASION” OF

ROBBERY
By
Prof. LOHEL A. MARTIREZ

§ 1. Introduction, p. 22
§ 2. What is robbery, p. 24
§ 3. Intimate connection between the robbery and
homicide, p. 25
§ 4. Notes on the Law on Plural Crimes, p. 26
§ 5. Appellants’ uncorroborated alibis, p. 30

____________________

§ 1. Introduction

The case under annotation, entitled People of the

Philippines vs. Herminio Barut, et al., G.R. No. L-42666,
promulgated on March 13, 1979, dealt with the complex
crime of Robbery with Homicide. And as far as “excitement”
is concerned, there was none of that sort because the
robbery victim was an octogenarian held at gunpoint and
the money involved was a meager twenty-three pesos and
some carpentry tools worth one hundred pesos only.
A very important point touched by the Supreme Court
however, was that, even though the killing of a third
person was perpetrated after the consummation of the
robbery and after the robbers had left the victim’s house,
the homicide is still integrated with the robbery or is
regarded as having been committed “by reason or on
occasion” thereof, as contemplated in article 294(1) of the
Revised Penal Code.
The world had been and will continue to be
contaminated with the presence of people wont to rob, to
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steal, and at worst,

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to stain their hands with the blood of their innocent

victims, that even the finest laws nor the best legal minds
put together cannot forever assuage the evil designs of the
malefactors. Death penalties either by hanging, gas
chambers, electric chairs, firing squads; life imprisonments
and other stiff penalties in the penal books world over,
seemed to have lost its fearful effects upon the criminals
out to prove themselves masters of their notorious pre-
occupations outside of the law.
But as long as man lives in a free society, the aggrieved
shall always be free to seek Justice for a wrong done to him
and his family.
Man’s search for justice has revolutionized the legal
histories of the nations and affected the economic sphere
and the political domains of all the countries.
And today, long after the eventful drama of Runnymede
where an arrogant ruler hesitatingly stamped his
recognition what democracy means and the right of the
people to demand for justice, even at the risk of taking up
arms in defense of their treasured rights and freedoms,
justice remains the pivot of those who undertake the
movement for self-expression and self-direction.
So man continues to seek for justice. Like a crusader,
defies, challenges, experiments, probes, in the slow process
of dispensing justice to the victims of oppression and to
those who hunger for the protection of the law.
The evolution of justice in the Philippines has been
unfortunately painful and slow. The writer does not want
the readers to understand that to go back to the Code of
Kalantiaw and witness all its tortures and horrifying
experiences of those who were accused, with all its
swiftness in deciding cases, was a glorification of justice as
we understand the word today. The justice that the
Philippines had under the tutelage of Spain was the justice
hand-carried to the conquered by the conquerors.
Justice will shine in all its majesty if the respect of laws
and in our courts are deeply rooted among our people. To
agitate to undermine the faith of the citizens in its
judiciary is indeed a criminal act. The Legislative or the
Executive branches of our

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government may be guilty of corrupt practices and deserves

to be punished but our courts must always be the refuge of
the persecuted from the evil ways of the scoundrels. Our
courts will remain the anchor to our democratic institution
in the face of storms and stress and upheavals which will
embolden us to march on and broaden our outlook as a free
people under the mantle of a regime where judiciary is free
and fearless.
Perfection is an ideal. Yet, the master-planners of man’s
utopias where the millennium would forever reign as
dreamed of by them, could not enact the perfect laws and
dispense justice with precision and perfection.
The Philippines has been the recipient of the Roman
contributions to our legal knowledge via Spain which have
been promulgated for observance by the people in the Holy
Roman Empire. The Anglo-Saxon contributions to our laws
came with the defeat of Spanish arms in the Philippines
and the implantation of the American sovereignty over the
country.
Laws are older than man’s struggle for freedom. No
nation has ever presented freedom to encounter nation on a
gold platter. With freedom goes the humanization of laws
predicated in the well-being of its people.
In this Annotation, few attempts shall be made to show
how the law on complex crimes grew out of the many
convulsions arising from the legal battles, to strengthen the
interpretation of our laws and to strengthen the judiciary
untainted by fear or favor much more of politics.
As it is in the past, so is at present and in the future, the
consummate flower of civilization is and remains justice—
the greatest interest of man on earth.

§ 2. What is robbery?

Any person who, with intent to gain, shall take any

personal property belonging to another, by means of
violence against or intimidation of any person, or using
force upon anything, shall be guilty of robbery. (Art. 293,
R.P.C.) Any person guilty of robbery with the use of
violence against, or intimidation of any person shall suffer
the penalty of reclusion perpetua to death,

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when by reason or on occasion of the robbery, the crime of

homicide shall have been committed. (Art. 294(1) R.P.C.)
In this offense the kind and value of the property taken
is not material, but it must be of some value, however
slight, to the person robbed. (Wesley vs. State, 61 Ala. 287)
The taking is meant not only the immediate taking from
his person, but also in his presence when it is done with
violence and against his consent. The taking must be by
violence or putting the owner in fear; but both these
circumstances need not concur. The violence or putting in
fear must be at the time of the act or immediately
preceding. One who is present and aids and abets a robbery
is punishable as a principal, though he receives none of the
money. To show how the Supreme Court ruled against such
perpetrators, in People vs. Feliciano, 43 O.G. 4627, it said
“Peccants of bathyal perversity deserve no less. They
should he permanently banished (italics supplied) from all
intercourse with the society of good citizens and expiate
their accursed crime to the full extent required by justice,
no compromise with lawlessness shall be countenanced.”
He who with intent to profit thereby, shall take possession
of the personal property of another with violence or
intimidation of the person, or by employing force with
regard to the personal property, is guilty of robbery. (U.S.
vs. Mack, 4 Phil. 185.)

§ 3. Intimate connection between the robbery and

homicide

There are instances where people get killed prior to,

during, or after the commission of robbery. And the victim
of the killing could either be the person robbed or somebody
else. In the instant case under annotation, although the
killing of Evaristo Tuvera (a neighbor of Francisco Lazaro,
the robbery victim) was perpetrated after the
consummation of the robbery and after the robbers had left
the victim’s house, the homicide is still integrated with the
robbery or is regarded as having been committed “by
reason or on the occasion” thereof, said the Court. The
death was connected with the robbery, and all were
declared co-conspirators for the crime. The law, the Court
said, does not require that the victim of the robbery be also
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the victim of the homicide. (citing People vs. Moro

Disimban, 88 Phil.
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120; People vs. Salamuddin No. 1, 62 Phil. 670; People vs.

Gardon, 104 Phil. 371.)
In U.S. vs. Landasan, 35 Phil. 369, the Court ruled: The
crime of robbery with homicide is the same, special,
complex crime whether there was a murder or not. It is
one, single and indivisible crime. Wherefore the
circumstances of treachery, though present in the case,
does not vary the classification of the crime as robbery with
homicide, making the two homicides murder or robbery
with murder instead of robbery with homicide.
Whenever a homicide has been committed as a
consequence or on the occasion of a robbery, all those who
took part as principals in the commission of the robbery
will also be held guilty as principals in the complex crime of
robbery with homicide, although they did not actually take
part in the homicide, unless it clearly appeared that they
endeavoured to prevent the unlawful killing. (U.S. vs.
Macalalad, 9 Phil. 1) When there is a direct relation, an
intimate connection between the robbery and the killing—
whether the latter be prior or subsequent to the former or
whether both crimes be committed at the same time—it is
unquestionable that they constitute the complex special
crime of robbery with homicide (People vs. Hernandez, 46
Phil. 48). And it is enough that a homicide would result by
reason or on the occasion of the robbery. (People vs.
Mangulabanan, 52 O.G. 6532) The robbery and murder
committed, being both qualified by the clause “by reason or
on occasion of the robbery”, are converted into a single,
indivisible crime, that of robbery with homicide. (People vs.
Mantawar, 80 Phil. 817) The word “Homicide” is used in a
generic sense. The complex crime contemplated
comprehends not only robbery with murder. An offense is
not taken out of the purview of Article 294 (1) merely
because the homicide rises to the atrocity of murder.

§ 4. Notes on the Law on Plural Crimes

Under the punitive system established by the classical

school, to which our Penal Code belongs, a person

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committing

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multiple crimes may meet either one penalty only, or

several ones, depending on whether the type of multiple
crimes committed is ideal or material.
Plural crimes of the ideal type which entail only one
penalty, are divided into three groups, namely:
First Group: The so-called complex crimes penalized
under Article 48 of the Penal Code, takes place—

a. When two or more offenses are caused or produced

by one single act. For instance, a person who throws
a handgrenade and causes thereby several victims,
one killed and several injured, is guilty of the
complex crime of murder with physical injuries.
(People vs. Guillen, 47 O.G. 3433, 1951)
b. When two crimes have been committed, but one is a
necessary means to commit the other. For instance,
a person who forges the signature of a payee in a
government warrant in order to cash such warrant,
is guilty of the complex crime of estafa through the
falsification of a public document. (People vs.
Goyrosaga, 53 Phil. 278); Or where an accused
forcibly abducts and rapes the victim afterward is
guilty of a complex crime of abduction with rape.
(People vs. de Guzman, et al., 51 Phil. 195) In the
first case, the crime of falsification was a necessary
means to commit the estafa; while in the second,
the abduction was a means to commit rape.

It must be taken into account that for the multiple or

plural crime to be considered as a complex crime under the
provisions of Article 48 of the Revised Penal Code, it must
clearly appear that the offender has availed himself of one
crime for the purpose of committing the other. In other
words, it must clearly appear that one of the crimes is the
end while the other is the means to attain the former;
otherwise, a material plurality of crime is obtained, and as
such must be treated and penalized independently one
from the other.
Second Group: When the law specifically fixes one single
penalty for two or more offenses committed. For instance,

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kidnapping with serious physical injuries; robbery with

homicide; frustrated robbery with homicide.
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Third Group: In cases of continued crime, which in

appearance consists of several crimes but in reality, it is a
sole or single crime in the mind of the perpetrator. For
instance, a bill collector of a commercial firm
misappropriates for his personal use several amounts
collected by him from different persons that, at different
times.
There is here but one crime, because the different and
successive misappropriations are but the different
moments during which one criminal resolution arises and a
single fraud develops. Should the different
misappropriations be disconnected from one another and
each of them prompted by a different intention, there
would be the so-called real plurality of crimes, calling for as
many penalties as misappropriations have been committed;
but since the intention is only one and hence, the malice is
likewise one only, there is but one crime because the
different and successive misappropriations are merely
different and successive portions of a single
misappropriation which is the result of one single malicious
intent. (U.S. vs. Ferrer, 1 Phil. 56)
Article 48, reads: “When a single act constitutes two or
more grave or less grave felonies, or when an offense is a
necessary means for committing the other, the penalty for
the most serious crime shall be imposed the same to be
applied in the maximum period.” (As amended by Act No.
4000)
The word “crime” in the original, was substituted to
“grave or less grave felonies.” Hence, this particular article
is not applicable to light felonies; (People vs. Turla, 50 Phil.
1001) and has nothing to do with misdeameanors. In order
to determine whether two offenses constitute a complex
crime, we should not find out whether, in accordance with
their definition by law, one of them is an essential element
of the other, such as physical injuries which cause the
death of the victim, or the stealing of personal property
without the consent of the owner through force or violence,
for in such case there would be only one single offense of
homicide on the first and robbery on the second place. But
we should take into consideration the facts alleged in the
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complaint or information and determine whether one of the

two separate and different offenses charged therein was
committed as a necessary means to commit the other of-
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fense; if it were, the two offenses constitute one complex

crime; otherwise, the complaint or information charges two
crimes or offenses independent from one another.
For example, the crime of falsification of a private
document is not, in general, an essential element of the
crime of estafa, because this offense may be committed
through many and varied means; but if a defendant is
charged in a complaint or information with having
committed falsification of a private document as a means
for committing estafa, the offense charged would be a
complex offense of estafa through falsification. Also,
abduction is, in general, not an essential element of rape
because rape may be committed anywhere without the
necessity of forcibly abducting or taking the victim to
another place for that purpose; but if the offense charged is
that the defendant abducted or carried by force the victim
from one place to another wherein the latter was raped by
the former, the crime charged would be a complex crime of
rape through abduction, the abduction being in such a case,
a necessary means to commit the rape. And although
homicide or murder may be committed wherever the victim
may be found, yet if the charge in a complaint or
information is that the victim was kidnapped and taken to
another distant place in order to demand ransom for his
release and kill him if ransom is not paid, the offense
charged would evidently be a complex crime of murder
through kidnapping, the latter being a necessary means to
commit the former.
The Code intends to regulate here, two cases of
concurrence or plurality of crimes which in the field of legal
doctrines are called REAL plurality and IDEAL plurality.
Two methods of punishment are proposed for complex
crimes—cumulation and absorption. By the former the
criminal expiates oneby-one every crime involved in the act
for which he is prosecuted, and this is the method
prevailing in the United States. By the latter, the more
serious offense absorbes the lighter, if a criminal intent is
common to both, and this is the method adopted by our
code and the majority of modern penal codes. In some
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codes, the mixed method prevails, which consists in adding

all the penalties up to a pre-deteramined limit in order to
avoid an excessive rigor which would result from a

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strict cumulation, and this the method adopted by the

former code in its article 88 which provided that the
maximum duration of the sentence for two or more offenses
should not exceed three times that provided for the most
severe of the penalties that the culprit may have incurred,
and in no case was such a maximum term to exceed forty
years.
There is in the present code, no provision limiting the
duration of the penalty to be imposed on a person who has
committed two or more offenses and the practical absurdity
might occur of having several penalties imposed on him,
the total of which would exceed the natural term of a
human life.
It is not difficult to determine if a given set of facts
constitute a single act which produces two or more offenses.
So long as the act or acts complained of resulted from a
single criminal impulse it is usually held to constitute a
single offense to be punished with the penalty
corresponding to the more serious crime imposed in its
maximum degree.
It is therefore clear, that whether the act complained of
be single and individual, or multiple obeying a single
criminal impulse, (People vs. Lafuente, 37 Phil. 671) the
same will always be treated as a single offense irrespective
of the fact that it resulted in more than one offense. But
when the act is wholly distinct, not only on account of its
own intrinsic duality but also on account of the fact that it
was directed against two different persons, the different
acts must be considered as distinct offenses, and the court
should impose upon the offender all the penalties
corresponding to the various violations of the law. (Ferrer, I
Phil. 561)
In summary, there are two kinds of complex crimes:

1. When a single act constitutes two or more grave or

less grave felonies. Otherwise known as compound
crime.
2. When an offense is a necessary means of
committing the other. Otherwise known as the
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complex crime proper.

§ 5. Appellants’ uncorroborated alibis

The herein appellants tried to make flickering attempts at

alibis, but with no exculpatory values. They tried to prove
that
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they were in some other places at the time of the

commission of the crime, but to no avail. Fugitives from
justice have many stories to tell, but the searching eye of
the court cannot be dimmed with all those fantastic stories,
just to avoid conviction.
The Supreme Court ruled, that, in order to establish an
alibi as a defense, the accused must show that he was at
another place for such a period of time that it was
impossible for him to have been at the place where the crime
was committed at the time of its commission. (People vs.
Lopez, et al., 80 SCRA 18) The defense of alibi is always
received with caution. It should be proved by probable
evidence which reasonably satisfies the Court of the truth of
such defense. Alibis cannot stand and prevail over clear and
convincing testimonies of credible witnesses. (People vs.
Gonzales, 77 SCRA 140)
It is easily understandable why the identification of an
ac cused as a participant in the commission of an offense by
evidence that is worthy of credence and belief negates the
claim of alibi. The falesity of an assertion that he was
elsewhere and therefore could not have been guilty of the
crime imputed to him becomes clear and positive, such a
defense is unavailing. (People vs. Caroz, 88 Phil. 52) An
alibi cannot avail as against the positive and direct
testimony of the witnesses for the prosecution. (U.S. vs.
Ambrosio, 17 Phil. 295; People vs. Sasota, 91 Phil. 111)
The Supreme Court said in People vs. Mahinay,
November 22, 1977, 80 SCRA 273:

“There is the defense of alibi, certainly in the light of so many past

decisions hardly sufficient to call for a reversal of the conviction.”
And in the Carandang case, it further said: “Nor is their case for a
reversal bolstered by their plea of alibi. This is not to lose sight of
the fact that the presence elsewhere of the accused would preclude
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their participation in a crime. Such a fact, if there be such, has to

be shown though by evidence that commands assent.”

We are in the age of great economic, social and political

upheavals which, upon thin vantage seems to be having no
immediate solutions as the worldwide drives for
adjustments
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sprint to nowhere. And in these troubled times, we need the

highest discipline within our midst; for brotherly love,
austerity, and sacrifices, and to rob, to steal and kill is
about one of the most distasteful decorum a Filipino can be
labelled with.
Lawyers as officers of the Courts of Justice must guide;
they should proclaim whenever and wherever they might
find themselves—the respect for the law so that JUSTICE
shall forever remain immaculate. They must help expose
crime within our midst and work intelligently hard to
protect the rights of the oppressed.

—————

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