Case Digest: PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES v. SONNY MAYAO

PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES v. SONNY MAYAO

522 SCRA 748 (2007), SECOND DIVISION

Sonny Mayao was charged before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Camarines Sur at San Jose with four separate counts of qualified rape. Three of the victims were all minors and one was the daughter of his common law wife. Mayao‘s appeal was premised on the ground that he was convicted of the rape on statutory grounds (victim was below 12 years old) and depriving the victims of consciousness while the charge sheet of the complaint specified that the rape was consummated though force or intimidation. Mayao also contends that the trial court failed to examine his defense and alibis for the four separate occasions of rape.

He maintains that he could not have successfully raped two of the victims inside a small room where several persons were sleeping and with bamboo floorings which usually produce noise whenever there is a movement. Mayao also presented a new alibi for the third rape on appeal.

ISSUE:

Whether or not the trial court failed to convict the defendant on evidence beyond reasonable doubt

HELD:

It is quite perplexing how Mayao could have missed out mentioning [his alibi] during his direct testimony that he was indeed in Pangasinan at the time the third rape of took place.

The Supreme Court impliedly recognized that an accused charged with rape through one mode of commission may still be convicted of the crime if the evidence shows another mode of commission provided that the accused. Even if the minor rape victim had conflicting statements as to the particular hour of the day when the rape was committed, the Court held that the inconsistencies referred “only to minor matters which do not detract from the credibility of the complainant or impair the evidence of the prosecution.” What is important is that, as the appellate court observed, CCC was “unfaltering in her declaration of the occurrence of rape” and that she positively identified accused-appellant as the perpetrator of the crime.

The Informations alleged that Mayao‘s is their stepfather. It appears, however, that he was, at the time of the rapes, only the common-law spouse of their mother. The relationship of stepfather presupposes a legitimate relationship. A stepfather is the husband of one‘s mother by virtue of a marriage subsequent to that of which the person spoken of is the offspring.