Baltazar, Marjorie A.

baltazar018.marjorie@yahoo.com

LW EXER 3
US sv. Ah Chong
GR No. 5271
19 March 1910
Facts:
Ah Chong and the deceased are roommates. Their small rooms only one opening is a
door which has no permanent lock or bolt. As a measure of security, they put a chair against
the door. Prior to the incident, there had been several robberies that is why Ah Chong always
have a knife under his pillow.
On the night of August 14, 1908, the defendant was awaken because of the noise that
someone is forcing the door open. He called out, Who is there twice? but no one answered.
He warned the intruder that he will kill him, if he enter the room. At that moment, he was
struck by the edge of the chair and thought that it was an assault from the robber. When the
intruder entered, he struck him with a knife. Ah Chong recognized his wounded roommate
and immediately called his employer and ran back to their room to get bandages for his
roommates wound.

Held:
At the trial, defendant admitted that he killed his roommate without malice or intent
but only by reason of self defence.
Article 8 of the Penal Code provides that
The following are not delinquent and are therefore exempt from criminal liability:
4. He who acts in defense of his person or rights, provided there are the following
attendant circumstances:
(1) Illegal aggression.

(2) Reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel it.

(3) Lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending himself.
Under such provision, the defendant should be criminally liable because there was no
aggression since the deceased was not a robber. Ah Chong nor his property nor the property
under his charge is in real danger at the time he struck the deceased.
There was also no reasonable necessity for the use of knife to defend himself nor his property
nor the property in his care.
The Court further questioned if a person can be criminally liable by reason of his
ignorance or the mistake as to the facts if they were the defendant supposed them to be, or if
the defendant would have committed the offense if he had known of the state of the facts
when he committed the act.
Article 1 of the Penal Code is as follows:
Crimes or misdemeanors are voluntary acts and ommissions punished by law.
Acts and omissions punished by law are always presumed to be voluntarily unless the
contrary shall appear.
An person voluntarily committing a crime or misdemeanor shall incur criminal
liability, even though the wrongful act committed be different from that which he had
intended to commit.
The act must be committed with malice in order that the actor be criminally liable.
The dissesting opinion of the is that inasmuch as the victim was wilfully (voluntariomente)
killed, and while the act was done without malice or criminal intent it was, however, executed
with real negligence, for the acts committed by the deceased could not warrant the aggression
by the defendant under the erroneous belief on the part of the accused that the person who
assaulted him was a malefactor; the defendant therefore incurred responsibility in attacking
with a knife the person who was accustomed to enter said room, without any justifiable
motive.