Improbable claim

When a legally married person surprises his spouse in the act of committing sexual intercourse with another person and kills one or both of them in the act or immediately thereafter, he may not be held liable for such killing if the death is the proximate result of the outrage overwhelming him after catching his spouse in the act of infidelity. This is explained in this case of the spouses Leo and Lina.

Despite being married for a long time and with four children, Leo and Lina’s relationship was in turmoil. The spouses no longer lived together in the same house and had a family dispute submitted for conciliation before the barangay council. Indeed, the family elders had already been consulted about their frequent marital spats. Furthermore, Lina has not been the paragon of virtue as she has been seen on several occasions in several places with other men, particularly a certain Johnny.

Then one morning at about 11:30, Lina and her sister Mely with friend Tita were sitting outside the house of their neighbor Naty talking about the strawberry plantation where they had picked berries that morning.

Suddenly, Leo appeared before them, slapped Lina’s right cheek and said, “Come and get what you want.” Then he pulled out a knife from his pocket. The women scampered away, shouting for help. As Mely ran, she looked back and saw that her sister Lina had fallen into a canal and that Leo had stabbed her twice.

Lina’s brother Rolly, who had been chopping firewood, heard the shouts of the women. He ran towards where Mely stood and saw Lina sprawled on her back bleeding, while Leo was standing about seven to eight meters away. Rolly went after Leo but the latter ran away. Rolly returned to pick up Lina and then rushed her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.

On the other hand, Leo went to their house. When the policeman arrived, they found Leo sitting inside the bathroom with the kitchen knife stained with fresh blood, which he apparently used to stab his wife, and an empty bottle of poison on his side. The policeman arrested Leo but the knife was left inside the bathroom.

Based on the narration of the events by the persons named above who witnessed the incident, Leo was charged with the crime of parricide for willfully, unlawfully and feloniously, with evident premeditation and intent to kill, stabbing his wife Lina in the left chest which directly caused her death. During the trial, the prosecution presented all the persons who witnessed the incident as above narrated.

For his part, Leo did not deny the killing but he claimed that it had been committed because when he arrived home that morning after selling strawberries in the market, he found his wife Lina and a certain Pablo in the master bedroom engaged in what seemed to be a sexual act. In a fit of fury, he said he rushed to the kitchen and armed himself with a knife to protect himself from the man who looked stronger. But when he returned, Pablo had already gone out through the window. He gave chase but failed to catch him so he returned home to confront his wife.

However, she was no longer there but in the house of Naty. Then he asked Lina why she had gone to bed with another man. Lina infuriated him more when she revealed her plan to separate from him. So Leo slapped Lina as she ran away. Then he chased her down the slope where both of them rolled down and cried and were later found by the police.

The lower court, however, convicted Leo because his testimony is self-serving and insufficient to prove his innocence. This decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court. According to the Supreme Court, the defense of Leo does not hold water. The death must be the proximate result of the outrage overwhelming him after catching his spouse in the act of infidelity. The killing by the husband of his wife must be concerned with her flagrant adultery.

In this case there was failure of the defense to prove the alleged discovery of the sexual congress between Lina and Pablo. On the contrary, witnesses for the prosecution testified that Lina had been with them picking berries all morning on that fateful day. The improbability of the claimed adulterous rendezvous is thus apparent. In effect, the uncorroborated testimony of Leo that Lina committed the ultimate act of infidelity was successfully rebutted. His defense therefore has no leg to stand on.

The killing of an errant spouse can only be justified when the errant spouse is caught in flagrante delicto and it must be resorted to only with great caution, so much so that the law requires that it be inflicted only during the sexual intercourse or immediately thereafter (People vs. Wagas G.R. 61704, March 8, 1989).

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