G.R. No. L-13427; July 15, 1918
THE UNITED STATES, plaintiff-appellee, vs. VICTOR ORTENCIO, defendant-appellant.

FACTS:
On June 4, 1917, Victor Ortencio was charged with parricide for killing his wife, Catalina Villaranda. The prosecution’s primary witness was the victim’s mother, Eugenia Dolorota, who testified that on the morning of May 9, 1917, in the house of Natalio Ortencio (the accused’s uncle), the accused struck his wife on the head with a rice pestle after she refused his request to return to their own home. Dolorota stated she tried to intervene but was also struck and fled, leaving her daughter motionless on the floor. The accused presented a different version, claiming he found his wife and his uncle Natalio in flagrante delicto of adultery in the uncle’s house. He alleged that he struck at his uncle with a piece of wood, but the uncle dodged, causing the blow to hit his wife instead. The trial court convicted the accused and sentenced him to cadena perpetua, with an order to indemnify the heirs and to credit him with one-half of his preventive imprisonment. The accused appealed.

ISSUE:
Whether the accused is guilty of the crime of parricide and, if so, whether any mitigating or aggravating circumstances attended its commission.

RULING:
The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction for parricide under Article 402 of the Penal Code. The Court found the accused’s defense of having caught his wife in adultery unworthy of belief. It was improbable that such an act would occur in daylight in a small house with the victim’s mother present. Furthermore, the medical evidence showed the victim sustained multiple serious wounds, contradicting the accused’s claim of delivering only a single blow aimed at his uncle. The testimony of the eyewitness, Eugenia Dolorota, was deemed credible and consistent with the physical evidence.

The Court recognized the presence of extenuating circumstances: the accused was an uneducated and uncultured person (Article 9[7], Penal Code), and the victim’s conduct in refusing to go home, which fanned the accused’s jealousy, constituted a sufficient provocation (Article 11, as amended by Act No. 2142 ). With no aggravating circumstances to offset them, these extenuating circumstances warranted the imposition of the lesser penalty for parricide, which is cadena perpetua.

The Court modified the trial court’s judgment by increasing the indemnity to the heirs to P1,000 and imposing the accessory penalties of perpetual absolute disqualification and lifetime surveillance under Article 54 of the Penal Code. It also affirmed the allowance of one-half of the time of preventive imprisonment against the sentence, in accordance with Act No. 2557 .