Minority as mitigating circumstance under Article 68, Revised Penal Code.

PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES vs. RICHARD O. SARCIA, G.R. No. 169641, September 10, 2009

“x x x.

Article 335 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended by Republic Act No. 7659,[32] was the governing law at the time the accused-appellant committed the rape in question. Under the said law, the penalty of death shall be imposed when the victim of rape is a child below seven years of age. In this case, as the age of AAA, who was five (5) years old at the time the rape was committed, was alleged in the information and proven during trial by the presentation of her birth certificate, which showed her date of birth as January 16, 1991, the death penalty should be imposed.

However, this Court finds ground for modifying the penalty imposed by the CA. We cannot agree with the CAs conclusion that the accused-appellant cannot be deemed a minor at the time of the commission of the offense to entitle him to the privileged mitigating circumstance of minority pursuant to Article 68(2)[33] of the Revised Penal Code. When accused appellant testified on March 14, 2002, he admitted that he was 24 years old, which means that in 1996, he was 18 years of age. As found by the trial court, the rape incident could have taken place in any month and date in the year 1996. Since the prosecution was not able to prove the exact date and time when the rape was committed, it is not certain that the crime of rape was committed on or after he reached 18 years of age in 1996. In assessing the attendance of the mitigating circumstance of minority, all doubts should be resolved in favor of the accused, it being more beneficial to the latter. In fact, in several cases, this Court has appreciated this circumstance on the basis of a lone declaration of the accused regarding his age.[34]

Under Article 68 of the Revised Penal Code, when the offender is a minor under 18 years, the penalty next lower than that prescribed by law shall be imposed, but always in the proper period. However, for purposes of determining the proper penalty because of the privileged mitigating circumstance of minority, the penalty of death is still the penalty to be reckoned with.[35] Thus, the proper imposable penalty for the accused-appellant is reclusion perpetua.

X x x.”