G.R. No.

L-52688 October 17, 1980

THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, plaintiff-appellee,

AQUINO, J.:

Honorato Ambal appealed from the decision of the Court of First Instance of Camiguin convicting
him of parricide, sentencing him to reclusion perpetua and ordering him to pay an indemnity of
twelve thousand pesos to the heirs of his deceased wife, Felicula Vicente-Ambal (Criminal Case
No. 155-C).

In the morning of January 20, 1977, the barangay captain found under some flowering plants near
the house of Honorato Ambal located in Barrio Balbagon, Mambajao, Camiguin, Felicula Vicente-
Ambal, 48, mortally wounded. She asked for drinking water and medical assistance.

She sustained seven incised wounds in different parts of her body. She was placed in an
improvised hammock and brought to the hospital where she died forty minutes after arrival thereat
(Exh. B and G).

On that same morning, Honorato Ambal, husband of Felicula, after entrusting his child to a
neighbor, went to the house of the barangay captain and informed the latter's spouse that he
(Honorato) had killed his wife Feling. After making that oral confession, Ambal took a pedicab,
went to the municipal hall and surrendered to a policeman, also confessing to the latter that he
had liquidated his wife.

The policeman confiscated Ambal's long bolo, the tip of which was broken (Exh. F). Ambal was
bespattered with blood. His shirt was torn. He appeared to be weak.

The killing was the climax of a fifteen-year-old marriage featured by quarrels and bickerings which
were exacerbated by the fact that the wife sometimes did not stay in the conjugal abode and
chose to spend the night in the poblacion of Mambajao. The couple had eight children.

The immediate provocation for the assault was a quarrel induced by Felicula's failure to buy
medicine for Ambal who was afflicted with influenza. The two engaged in a heated alteration.
Felicula told her husband that it would be better if he were dead ("Mas maayo ka pang
mamatay"). That remark infuriated Ambal and impelled him to attack his wife (Exh. 1).

On January 27, 1977, a police lieutenant charged Ambal with parricide in the municipal court.
After a preliminary examination, the case was elevated to the Court of First Instance where on
March 4, 1977 the fiscal filed against Ambal an information for parricide. At the arraignment,
Ambal, assisted by counsel de oficio, pleaded not guilty.

After the prosecution had presented its evidence, accused's counsel de oficio manifested that the
defense of Ambal was insanity.

The trial court in its order of September 15, 1977 directed the municipal health officer, Doctor
Maximino R. Balbas, Jr., a 1960 medical graduate who had undergone a six-month training in
psychiatry in the National Mental Hospital, to examine Ambal and to submit within one month a
report on the latter's mental condition (p. 65, Record).

Doctor Balbas in his report dated November 3, 1977 found that Ambal was a "passive-aggressive,
emotionally unstable, explosive or inadequate personality" (Exh. 1).
Doctor Balbas testified that during the period form February 1 (twelve days after the killing) to
November 3, 1977, when he placed Ambal under observation, the latter did not show any mental
defect and was normal (44-46 tsn November 3,1977).

Asked directly whether Ambal suffered from a mental disease or defect, Doctor Balbas replied:
"Before the commission of the crime, he was normal. After the commission of the crime, normal,
but during the commission of the crime, that is what we call "Psychosis" due to short frustration
tolerance" (45 tsn).

Doctor Cresogono Llacuna,a 1937 medical graduate who undertook a two-month observation of
mental cases and who in the course of his long practice had treated around one hundred cases of
mental disorders, attended to Ambal in 1975. He found that Ambal suffered from a
psychoneurosis, a disturbance of the functional nervous system which is not insanity (65
November 15, 1977). The doctor concluded that Ambal was not insane. Ambal was normal but
nervous (68 He had no mental disorder.

Ambal, 49, who reached Grade four, testified on November 16, 1977 or about ten months after
the incident. He said that at the time of the killing he did not know what he was doing because he
was allegedly not in full possession of his normal mental faculties. He pretended not to know that
he was charged with the capital offense of having killed his wife.

But he admitted that he knew that his wife was dead because he was informed of her death.
During his confinement in jail he mopped the floor and cooked food for his fellow prisoners.
Sometimes, he worked in the town plaza or was sent unescorted to buy food in the market.

He said that his wife quarrelled with him. She was irritable. he admitted that he rode on a tricycle
when he surrendered on the day of the killing. He remembered that a week before the incident he
got wet while plowing. He feel asleep without changing his clothes. At midnight, when he woke
up, he had chills. That was the commencement, his last illness.

The trial court concluded from Ambal's behavior immediately after the incident that he was not
insane and that he acted like a normal human being. We agree with the court's conclusion.

Courts should be careful to distinguish insanity in law from passion or eccentricity, mental
weakness or mere depression resulting from physical ailment. The State should guard against
sane murderers escaping punishment through a general plea of insanity. (People vs. Bonoan, 64
Phil. 87, 94.)

Article 12 of the Revised Penal Code exempts from criminal liability an imbecile or an insane
person unless the latter has acted during a lucid interval. *

According to the dictionary imbecile is a person marked by mental deficiency while an insane
person is one who has an unsound mind or suffers from a mental disorder. "imbecil vale tanto
como escaso de razon y es loco el que ha perdido el juico." An insane person may have lucid
intervals but "el embecil no puede tener, no tiene estos intervalos de Corazon, pues en el no hay
una alteracion, sino una carencia del juico mismo" (1 Viada, Codigo Penal, 4th Ed., p. 92.)

Insanity has been defined as "a manifestation in language or conduct of disease or defect of the
brain, or a more or less permanently diseased or disordered condition of the mentality, functional
or organic, and characterized by perversion, inhibition, or disordered function of the sensory or of
the intellective faculties, or by impaired or disordered volition" (Sec. 1039, Revised Administrative
Code).

The law presumes that every person is of sound mind, in the absence of proof to the contrary (Art.
800, Civil Code re Testamentary Succession; U.S. vs. Martinez, 34 Phil. 305, 308). The law
always presumes all acts to be voluntary. It is improper to presume that acts were executed
unconsciously (People vs. Cruz, 109 Phil. 288, 292; People vs. Tagasa, 68 Phil. 147, 153; U.S.
vs. Guevara, 27 Phil. 547; People vs. Fausto, 113 Phil. 841).
When there is no proof that the defendant was not of sound mind at the time he performed the
criminal act charged to him, or that he performed it at the time of madness or of mental
derangement, or that he was generally considered to be insane — his habitual condition being, on
the contrary, healthy — the legal presumption is that he acted in his ordinary state of mind and
the burden is upon the defendant to overcome this presumption (U.S. vs. Zamora, 32 Phil. 218.)

Without positive proof that the defendant had lost his reason or was demented, a few moments
prior to or during the perpetration of the crime, it will be presumed that he was in a normal
condition (U.S. vs. Hontiveros Carmona, 18 Phil. 62).

A defendant in a criminal case, who interposes the defense of mental incapacity, has the burden
of establishing that fact, meaning that he was insane at the very moment when the crime was
committed (People vs. Bascos, 44 Phil. 204.)

What should be the criterion for insanity or imbecility? We have adopted the rule, based on
Spanish jurisprudence, that in order that a person could be regarded as an imbecile within the
meaning of article 12 of the Revised Penal Code, he must be deprived completely of reason or
discernment and freedom of the will at the time of committing the crime (People vs. Formigonez,
87 Phil. 658, 660)

In order that insanity may be taken as an exempting circumstance, there must be complete
deprivation of intelligence in the commission of the act or that the accused acted without the least
discernment. Mere abnormality of his mental faculties does not exclude imputability. (People vs.
Cruz, 109 Phil. 288,292; People vs. Renegado, L-27031, May 31,1974,57 SCRA 275, 286.)

A man who could feel the pangs of jealousy and who tried to vindicate his honor by taking violent
measures to the extent of killing his wife (whom he suspected of infidelity) can hardly be regarded
as an imbecile (Formigones case).

Where the accused had a passionate nature, with a tendency to having violent fits when angry,
his acts of breaking glasses and smashing dishes are indications of an explosive temper and not
insanity, especially considering that he did not turn violent when a policeman intercepted him after
he had killed his wife. (Cruz case.)

There is a vast difference between an insane person and one who has worked himself up into
such a frenzy of anger that he fails to use reason or good judgment in what he does. Persons who
get into a quarrel or fight seldom, if ever, act naturally during the fight. An extremely angry man,
often, if not always, acts like a madman. The fact that a person acts crazy is not conclusive that
he is insane. The popular meaning of the word I "crazy" is not synonymous with the legal terms
"insane", "non compos mentis," "unsound mind","idiot", or "lunatic" (U.S. vs. Vaquilar, 27 Phil. 88,
91.)

The heat of passion and feeling produced by motives of anger, hatred, or revenge is not insanity.
(People vs. Foy, 138 N.Y. 664, cited in Vaquilar case, on p. 92.)

One who, in possession of a sound and, commits a criminal act under the impulse of passion or
revenge, which may temporarily dethrone reason and for the moment control the will, cannot
nevertheless be shielded from the consequences of the act by the plea of insanity. Insanity will
only excuse the commission of a criminal act, when it is made affirmatively to appear that the
person committing it was insane, and that the offense was the direct consequence of his insanity
(State vs. Strickly, 41 Iowa 232, cited in Vaquilar case, on p. 94.)

The defense of insanity was rejected in a case where the accused killed by strangulation a
sixteen-year-old girl, who got leaves from his banana plants, and sliced the flesh of her legs,
thighs and shoulders, cooked the flesh and ate it like a cannibal. (People vs. Balondo, L-27401,
October 31, 1969, 30 SCRA 155).
Being weak-minded does not necessarily mean that the accused is insane (People vs. Martin,
120 Phil. 14, 20-21).

Justice Cardozo in his article, "What Medicine Can Do For The Law", traces briefly the origin of
the rule regarding insanity as a defense. He says:

In the early stages of our law, way back in medieval times, insanity was never a defense for
crime. The insane killer, like the man who killed in self-defense, might seek a pardon from the
king, and would often get one. He had no defense at law. Gradually insanity was allowed, but only
within narrow limits This was what was become known as the wild-beast stage of the defense.
Then the limits of the defense were expanded, but still slowly and narrowly. The killer was
excused if the disease of the mind was such that he was incapable of appreciating the difference
between right and wrong. At first this meant, not the right and wrong of particular case, but right
and wrong generally or in the abstract, the difference, as it was sometimes said, between good
and evil. Later, the rule was modified in favor of the prisoner so that capacity to distinguish
between right and wrong generally would not charge with responsibility if there was no capacity to
understand the difference in relation to the particular act, the subject of the crime.

The rule governing the subject was crystallized in England in 1843 by the answer made by the
House of Lords to questions submitted by judges in the famous case of McNaghten, who was
tried for the murder of one Drummond, the secretary of Sir Robert Peel.

In the M'Naghten case, 8 Eng. Rep. 718, Clark and Finelly 200, the following rule was laid down:
"To establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of
committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason from disease of
the mind, as not, to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that
he did not know he was doing what was wrong."

In the M'Naghten case, it appears that Daniel M'Naghten shot Edward Drummond on January 20,
1843. Drummond died as a consequence of the gunshot wound on April 25, 1843. Drummond
was the private secretary of Sir Robert Peel, prime minister M'Naghten shot Drummond, thinking
he was Sir Robert. M'Naghten labored under the the insane delusion that he was being hounded
by his enemies and that the prime minister was one of them. Medical evidence tended to prove
that M'Naghten was affected by morbid delusions which carried him beyond the power of his own
control, leaving him unable to distinguish right and wrong, and that he was incapable of controlling
his conduct in connection with the delusion. The jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity.

As stated in another case, the "test of the responsibility for criminal acts, when insanity is
asserted, is the capacity of the accused to distinguish between right and wrong at the time and
with respect to the act which is the subject of the inquiry. (Coleman's case,1 N.Y. Cr. Rep. 1.)

Another test is the so-called "irresistible impulse" test which means that "assuming defendant's
knowledge of the nature and quality of his act and his knowledge that the act is wrong, if, by
reason of disease of the mind, defendant has been deprived of or lost the power of his will which
would enable him to prevent himself from doing the act, then he cannot be found guilty." The
commission of the crime is excused even if the accused knew what he was doing was wrong
provided that as a result of mental disease he lacked the power to resist the impulse to commit
the act. (State v. White, 270 Pac. 2d. 727, 730; Leslie Kast, 31 North Dakota Law Review, pp.
170, 173.)

The latest rule on the point is that "the so-called right wrong test, supplemented by the irresistible
impulse test, does not alone supply adequate criteria for determining criminal responsibility of a
person alleged mental incapacity." "An accused is not criminally responsible if his unlawful act is
the product of a mental disease or a mental defect. A mental disease relieving an accused of
criminal responsibility for his unlawful act is a condition considered capable of improvement or
deterioration; a mental defect having such effect on criminal responsibility is a condition not
considered capable of improvement or deterioration, and either congenital, or the result of injury
or of a physical or mental disease." (Syllabi, Durham v. U.S., 214 F. 2nd. 862, 874, 45 A.L.R. 2d.
1430 [1954].)
As stated in 22 C.J.S. 203, "the general test of criminal responsibility may be stated to be the
capacity to understand the nature and consequences of the act charged and the ability to
distinguish between right and wrong as to such act, and in a majority of jurisdictions this is the
exclusive test."

And, as noted in 21 Am Jur 2d. 118, the rule in the M'Naghten case exists along with the
"irresistible impulse" test or some other formula permitting a defendant to be exculpated on the
ground that, although he knew the act was wrong, he was unable to refrain from committing it.

Since the broadest test suggested, which is the Durham or "Product" rule, also permits inability to
distinguish between right and wrong to be considered, even though it refuses to limit the inquiry to
that topic, it would appear that insanity which meets this test is a defense in all Anglo-American
jurisdictions and that the only controversy is over whether there are some cases in which the
right-and-wrong test is not met, but in which a defense on grounds of insanity should nevertheless
be recognized. (21 Am Jur 2d 118.)

In the instant case, the alleged insanity of Ambal was not substantiated by any sufficient
evidence. The presumption of sanity was not overthrown. He was not completely bereft of reason
or discernment and freedom of will when he mortally wounded his wife. He was not suffering from
any mental disease or defect.

The fact that immediately after the incident he thought of surrendering to the law-enforcing
authorities is incontestable proof that he knew that what he had done was wrong and that he was
going to be punished for it.

Ambal is guilty of parricide with the mitigating circumstance of voluntary surrender to the
authorities. Article 246 of the Revised Penal Code punishes parricide with reclusion perpetua to
death. The lesser penalty should be imposed because of the presence of one mitigating
circumstance and the absence of aggravating circumstances (Art. 63[3], Revised Penal Code).

WHEREFORE, the trial court's decision is affirmed. Costs against the appellant.