Philippine Supreme Court Jurisprudence > Year 1916 > February 1916 Decisions > G.R. No. 10672 October 26, 1915

UNITED STATES v. CARMEN IBAÑEZ

033 Phil 611:

Carmen Ibañez and Pacifico Manalili were prosecuted in the Court of First Instance of Cebu for the crime of adultery, on a complaint filed on May 21, 1914, by Felix Alviola, the husband of the first-named. The accused pleaded not guilty and were tried separately. On February 25 of the present year, 1915, the said Court of First Instance rendered judgment in both cases, finding the defendants guilty of the said crime and sentencing them to the penalty of three years six months and twenty-one days of prision correccional, each to pay one-half of the costs. The defendants appealed and their counsel assign several errors to the findings of the trial judge on the evidence presented in each of the two cases.

After a minute examination and a very careful review of the evidence we have found nothing to justify us in making and alteration or change in the said findings on which the trial judge based his judgment.

It was satisfactorily proven that the defendant Carmen Ibañez was the lawful wife of the complaining witness Felix Alviola; that their marriage had not been dissolved on any of the dates mentioned in the complaint when, according to the evidence, the acts constituting the crime in question were performed; and that the defendant Pacifico Manalili knew of the said dates that Carmen Ibañez, his codefendant, was the wife of the said Alviola. It was likewise proven beyond all doubt that, prior to the filing of the complaint, intimate relations of a very suspicious character existed between Carmen Ibañez and Pacifico Manalili; that on one occasion they were together, alone, seated on a dry river-bed in the shade of the bamboo trees; that the defendant Pacifico Manalili was accustomed to frequent the home of the spouses Carmen Ibañez and Felix Alviola at times when the latter was absent; that during such visits the doors and windows of the house were habitually closed; that Carmen Ibañez often absented herself from her home; that on one of these occasions her husband, watching and following her, saw her in company with Manalili; that the defendants separated on perceiving Alviola’s presence, each of them going in a different direction; that on meeting his wife Alviola asked her where she had been; that she replied she had been to the dressmaker’s; that on another occasion Alviola surprised the defendant Manalili going down the stairs of the conjugal home, and that immediately Manalili hurriedly mounted his bicycle and rode away.

And finally it was proven that twice when Felix Alviola was away from home the defendant Pacifico Manalili and his codefendant Carmen Ibañez, Alviola’s wife, had sexual intercourse in the said house — once on May 16, 1914, and again a few days afterwards on the morning of the 21st; that on this last occasion, Alviola, having been notified previously, went to his house accompanied by a policeman and surprised Manalili hiding behind the kitchen door; that his coaccused Carmen Ibañez was alone in the said house at the time and when her husband asked her whose bicycle it was that was standing at the door and who was inside the house, the said Carmen concealed and denied the presence therein of the said Manalili, and that the bicycle turned out to belong to the latter.

The defendants are therefore guilty as principals by direct participation of the crime of adultery provided for and punished by article 433 of the Penal Code, and the trial judge correctly so held in view of the evidence submitted in each of the aforesaid cases. But account should be taken of the aggravating circumstance of the crime having been committed in the house of the aggrieved person in spite of the fact that the conjugal home was the common domicile of Felix Alviola and his wife, Carmen Ibañez; the latter, false to the duty she owed her husband of being faithful to him, failed, as did the other defendant, to respect the sacredness of this home, and both the defendants injured and committed a grave offense against the said Felix Alviola, the master of that home. In a similar case the supreme court of Spain laid down the same rule in its decision of July 6, 1885, saying:jgc:chanrobles.com.ph

"As the person offended by the crime of adultery is the husband, the aggravating circumstance of committing it in his dwelling cannot be excused by the fact that the dwelling was also the home of the adulteress; because, aside from the consideration that the stranger to the marriage who violated the law in that domicile is not a member of the community residing there, the adulates’ liability is morally and legally accentuated by her lack of respect for the domicile of the offended party, as is implied by her brazen and outrageous consummation of the crime therein."cralaw virtua1aw library

There being no extenuating circumstance to offset the said aggravating one, the corresponding penalty in its maximum degree should be imposed upon the defendants, in addition to which the defendant Pacifico Manalili should also be sentenced to the accessory penalties of article 61 of the Penal Code.

Therefore, with the understanding that the penalty of prision correccional imposed upon each of the defendants shall be one of imprisonment for four years nine months and eleven days and that the defendant Pacifico Manalili in addition thereto shall be sentenced to the accessory penalties of suspension from all office and from the right of suffrage during the term of his sentence, we affirm the respective judgments appealed from, with costs of both instances against the appellants. So ordered.

Arellano, C.J., Torres, Johnson, Carson, and Trent, JJ., concur.