PEOPLE v GERONIMO (100 PHIL 90) (Digest)

No Complex Crime of Rebellion, murder, kidnapping, or robbery.

21. PEOPLE v GERONIMO (100 PHIL 90)  October 23, 1956 G.R. L-8936

Facts:

                The accused-appellant a member of HUK together his companion; ambushed and fired upon the party of Mrs. Aurora A. Quezon and her PC escort whom they considered as their enemies resulting in the killing of Mrs. Aurora A. Quezon, Baby Quezon, Mayor Bernardo of Quezon City and other members of PC escort on April 28, 1949.

                On August 26, 1950, about one hundred armed HUKS with intent to gain robbed the Cashier of the Provincial -Treasury, Mr. Vicente Reventar from his house to the Provincial Capitol and at the point of guns forced him to open the Treasury Vault and took therefrom Eighty Thousand Pesos (P80,000). The accused-appellant charged with complex crime as rebellion with murders, robberies,   and kidnapping.

ISSUE: W/N rebellion can be complexed with murder, kidnapping, or robbery.

Held: NO!

HELD:

                Not every act of violence is deemed absorbed in the crime of rebellion solely because it was committed simultaneously with or in the course of the rebellion. If the killing, robbing, etc. were done for private purposes or profit, without any political motivation, the crime would be separately punishable and would not be absorbed by the rebellion and the individual misdeed could not be taken with the rebellion to constitute a complex crime, for the constitutive acts and intent would be unrelated to each other. The individual crime would not be a means necessary for committing the rebellion, as it would not be done in preparation or in furtherance of the latter.