Case Digest: People vs. Malngan, G.R. No. 170470, September 26, 2006

                            Rule 115: Rights of the Accused  | Criminal Procedure

                           Extra-judicial Confession

Facts (Recit Version):

Edna Malngan was found guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime of 'Arson with Multiple Homicide or Arson resulting to the death of six (6) people, and sentencing her to suffer the penalty of death.

Rolando Gruta, a pedicab driver, witnessed the accused-appellant, Edna, leaving her employer's house in a hurry and boarding a pedicab. Edna instructed the pedicab driver to take her to Nipa Street but changed her mind and asked to be taken to Balasan Street. Thirty minutes later, a fire broke out at the employer's house, and Remigio Bernardo, the Barangay Chairman, and and his group responded to the incident.

Rolando Gruta reported to Barangay Chairman Bernardo that he saw Edna leaving the house and received a call about her suspicious behavior on Balasan Street. Barangay Chairman Bernardo and his group apprehended Edna on Balasan Street and brought her to the Barangay Hall.

Mercedita Mendoza, a neighbor, identified Edna as the housemaid of the employer and confirmed her suspicious actions.

Edna confessed to Barangay Chairman Bernardo that she set the house on fire because she hadn't been paid for a year and was told by her employer's wife to ride a broomstick home. Mercedita Mendoza visited Edna in her detention cell and asked her why she burned the house, to which Edna replied with the employer's derogatory comments and explained how she set the fire.

Edna admitted the crime to a reporter and during a television program while under detention.

The fire resulted in the destruction of the employer's two-storey house and neighboring houses, as well as the death of Roberto Separa, Sr., Virginia Separa, and their four children.

Issue:

WoN the testimony of prosecution witnesses Barangay Chairman Remigio Bernardo and Mercedita Mendoza are inadmissible for being hearsay and in the nature of an uncounseled admission.

Contention: 

She contends that being uncounselled extrajudicial confession, her admissions given to prosecution witnesses to having committed the crime charged should have been excluded in evidence against her for being violative of Article III, Section 12(1) of the Constitution

Held: NO.

The constitutional provision applies to the stage of custodial investigation ' when the investigation is no longer a general inquiry into an unsolved crime but starts to focus on a particular person as a suspect. Said constitutional guarantee has also been extended to situations in which an individual has not been formally arrested but has merely been 'invited for questioning.

Arguably, the barangay tanods, including the Barangay Chairman, in this particular instance, may be deemed as law enforcement officer for purposes of applying Article III, Section 12(1) and (3), of the Constitution. When accused-appellant was brought to the barangay hall in the morning of 2 January 2001, she was already a suspect, actually the only one, in the fire that destroyed several houses as well as killed the whole family of Roberto Separa, Sr. She was, therefore, already under custodial investigation and the rights guaranteed by Article III, Section 12(1), of the Constitution should have already been observed or applied to her. Accused-appellant's confession to Barangay Chairman Remigio Bernardo was made in response to the 'interrogation made by the latter ' admittedly conducted without first informing accused-appellant of her rights under the Constitution or done in the presence of counsel. For this reason, the confession of accused-appellant, given to Barangay Chairman Remigio Bernardo, as well as the lighter found by the latter in her bag are inadmissible in evidence against her as such were obtained in violation of her constitutional rights.

Be that as it may, the inadmissibility of accused-appellant's confession to Barangay Chairman Remigio Bernardo and the lighter as evidence do not automatically lead to her acquittal. It should well be recalled that the constitutional safeguards during custodial investigations do not apply to those not elicited through questioning by the police or their agents but given in an ordinary manner whereby the accused verbally admits to having committed the offense as what happened in the case at bar when accused-appellant admitted to Mercedita Mendoza, one of the neighbors of Roberto Separa, Sr., to having started the fire in the Separas house. 

The testimony of Mercedita Mendoza recounting said admission is, unfortunately for accused-appellant, admissible in evidence against her and is not covered by the aforesaid constitutional guarantee. Article III of the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights, solely governs the relationship between the individual on one hand and the State (and its agents) on the other; it does not concern itself with the relation between a private individual and another private individual ' as both accused-appellant and prosecution witness Mercedita Mendoza undoubtedly are. Here, there is no evidence on record to show that said witness was acting under police authority, so appropriately, accused-appellant's uncounselled extrajudicial confession to said witness was properly admitted by the RTC.

Accused-appellant likewise assails the admission of the testimony of SPO4 Danilo Talusan. Contending that '[w]hen SPO4 Danilo Talusan testified in court, his story is more of events, which are not within his personal knowledge but based from accounts of witnesses who derived information allegedly from the accused or some other persons x x x. In other words, she objects to the testimony for being merely hearsay. With this imputation of inadmissibility, we agree with what the Court of Appeals had to say: Although this testimony of SFO4 Danilo Talusan is hearsay because he was not present when Gus Abelgas interviewed accused-appellant EDNA, it may nevertheless be admitted in evidence as an independently relevant statement to establish not the truth but the tenor of the statement or the fact that the statement was made.

Under the doctrine of independently relevant statements, regardless of their truth or falsity, the fact that such statements have been made is relevant. The hearsay rule does not apply, and the statements are admissible as evidence. Evidence as to the making of such statement is not secondary but primary, for the statement itself may constitute a fact in issue or be circumstantially relevant as to the existence of such a fact.