G.R. No. 579 : July 24, 1903
THE UNITED STATES, complainant-appellee, vs. TEODORO PACHECO, ET AL., defendants-appellants.

FACTS:
In April 1900, after Holy Week, Guillermo Balderrama and a youth named Eusebio Flor Bago were walking from Dagupan to the barrio of Carael in Pangasinan. Upon reaching a bridge, several men, including the accused, ambushed them. Balderrama was bound, taken to a nearby nipa plantation, killed, and buried. Bago was taken to a house and later that evening brought to the bank of the Manat River, where he was seriously wounded and thrown into the river. The victims were from Zambales and were selling English dictionaries in Dagupan. The accused, who were members of the insurrectionist movement with Teodoro Pacheco being a recruiting captain, seized and killed the deceased because they believed that selling English-language books made them spies for the Americans and thus traitors to the revolutionary cause. The trial court convicted the defendants.

ISSUE:
Whether the defendants are entitled to the benefits of the Amnesty Proclamation of July 4, 1902, for the crimes committed.

RULING:
Yes. The Supreme Court held that the two murders were of a political character, resulting from internal political hatreds between Filipinos during the period of insurrection against the constituted government. The Court considered the extraordinary disturbances in the country following 1896 and the sovereign power’s act of statesmanship in granting amnesty to blot out certain classes of offenses. Consequently, the Court ruled that the accusedFelipe Abalos, Teodoro Pacheco, Cristobal Tenoliar, Esteban Pacheco, and Mariano Gonzalowere included within the amnesty grant. The lower court was directed to notify the defendants, and upon their taking the prescribed oath, they were to be set at liberty. The decision was concurred in by the majority, with one Justice dissenting in part regarding defendant Teodoro Pacheco.