PEOPLE vs 

LAMAHANG
G.R. No. L-43530
August 03, 1935
 

FACTS:

1. The defendant Aurelio Lamahang is on appeal from a decision finding him guilty
of attempted robbery.
2. At early dawn on March 2, 1935, police man Jose Tomambing, who was
patrolling his beat on Delgado and C.R Fuentes streets of Iloilo caught the
accused in the act of making an opening with an iron bar on the wall of a store of
cheap goods located on the last-named street.
3. At that time the owner of the store, Tan Yu, was sleeping inside with another
Chinaman.
4. The accused had only succeeded in breaking one board an in unfastening another
from the wall, when the policeman showed up, who instantly arrested him and
placed him under custody.
ISSUE:
WON the accused was erroneously declared guilty of attempted robbery.
RULING:

Yes.  The court ruled that the accused was guilty of attempted trespass to dwelling
committed by means of force, with the aforesaid aggravating and mitigating
circumstances and sentenced to three months and one day of arresto mayor.

An offense which the Penal Code punishes is that which has a logical relation to a
particular, concrete offense; that, which is the beginning of the execution of the offense
by overt acts of the perpetrator, leading directly to its realization and consummation.
The attempt to commit an indeterminate offense, inasmuch as its nature in relation to
its objective is ambiguous, is not a juridical fact from the standpoint of the Penal Code.
There is no doubt that in the case at bar it was the intention of the accused to enter Tan
Yu's store by means of violence, passing through the opening which he had started to
make on the wall, in order to commit an offense which, due to the timely arrival of
policeman Tomambing, did not develop beyond the first steps of its execution. But it is
not sufficient, for the purpose of imposing penal sanction, that an act objectively
performed constitute a mere beginning of execution; it is necessary to establish its
unavoidable connection, like the logical and natural relation of the cause and its effect,
with the deed which, upon its consummation, will develop into one of the offenses
defined and punished by the Code; it is necessary to prove that said beginning of
execution, if carried to its complete termination following its natural course, without
being frustrated by external obstacles nor by the voluntary desistance of the
perpetrator, will logically and necessarily ripen into a concrete offense. Thus, in case of
robbery, in order that the simple act of entering by means of force or violence another
person's dwelling may be considered an attempt to commit this offense, it must be
shown that the offender clearly intended to take possession, for the purpose of gain, of
some personal property belonging to another. In the instant case, there is nothing in the
record from which such purpose of the accused may reasonably be inferred. From the
fact established and stated in the decision, that the accused on the day in question was
making an opening by means of an iron bar on the wall of Tan Yu's store, it may only be
inferred as a logical conclusion that his evident intention was to enter by means of force
said store against the will of its owner.