Oblinar V CA

OLBINAR v CA
FACTS: Romeo Cahilog was boxing, Procerfina Olbinar's husband, Emiliano Olbinar; Fernando Jimenez
was trying to break up the assault by pulling Romeo Cahilog from behind; After seeing her bloodied
husband on the groundd, Procerfina came back with a bolo and hacked Fernando Jimenez in the right
ear; a second blow was parried by the latter with his hand; Fernando cried out that he had been hacked
after which he lost consciousness; Fernando sustained a wound in the left ear and a broken left forearm.
Procerfina, in her defense, established that she had acted in legitimate defense of her husband and
should therefore be exculpated. However, RTC and CA both riled that she could only be credited only
with the special mitigating circumstance of incomplete defense of relative because the means employed
by Procerfina to prevent or repel the aggression against her husband were not reasonably necessary.
ISSUE:
Whether Procerfina Olbinar shall be exculpated from the crime because she acted in defense of a
relative – her husband, which is within the bounds of the justifying circumstances. YES.
HELD:
Art. 11. Justifying circumstances. — The following do not incur any criminal liability:
1. Anyone who acts in defense of his person or rights provided that the following circumstances concur:
First. Unlawful aggression; Second. Reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel it;
Third. Lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending himself.
2. Anyone who acts in defense of the person or rights of his spouse, ascendants, descendants, or
legitimate, natural or adopted brothers or sisters, or of his relatives by affinity in the same degrees, and
those by consanguinity within the fourth civil degree, provided that the first and second requisites
prescribed in the next preceding circumstance are present, and the further requisite, in case the
provocation was given by the person attacked, that the one making defense had no part therein.
Art. 13. Mitigating circumstances. — The following are mitigating circumstances:
1. Those mentioned in the preceding chapter (i.e., justifying and exempting circumstances), when all the
requisites necessary to justify the act or to exempt from criminal liability in the respective cases are not
attendant.
Unlawful aggression and absence of provocation. Procerfina saw that he had fallen to the ground and
his face had been bloodied, because of the assault. Procerfina had not seen the commencement of the
assault on her husband. She had no way of knowing if her husband had given sufficient provocation
therefor. All that she saw, on responding to her husband's cry for help, was that he was on the ground,
there was blood on his person, and two men were boxing and kicking him.
Reasonable necessity of means employed to prevent or repel it. After she had tried vainly to get the
men to stop beating her husband, she had gotten a bolo from her home and rushed back to defend her
fallen spouse who, for all she knew, was already seriously wounded.
Unarmed, and her husband to all appearances already hors de combat, she evidently could offer no
reasonable defense, or otherwise cause cessation of the assault on her husband. Given the compelling
urgency for swift action to stop the assault, she must have been near panic and had no time to
investigate. Hence, the Court held that Procerfina had acted in justifiable defense of her husband. In the
situation in which she had found herself, she was justified in believing that her husband was the victim
of an unlawful aggression by two (2) men, who had gotten the better of him and had already succeeded
in bloodying his face and dropping him to the ground; she had no way of knowing if her husband had
given provocation for the attack; she herself had not given any such provocation; and the means
employed by her were not in the premises unreasonable considering that without any weapon, she was
no match for either of the assailants, much less both of them.

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