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Dominic Oswald C.

Halili
Legal Technique and Logic

FACTS: Four miners, namely, A, B, C, D, and E, while mining in a mining


cave, were suddenly trapped and are unable to get out. The miners were
starving and without anything to eat, A, B, C, and D, decided to kill their co-
miner E and eat his flesh. A, B, C, and D, were all accused of Murder.

ISSUE: Whether or not A, B, C, and D should be held guilty for the crime
of Murder viewed in the light of the above-stated factual incidents?

RULE OF LAW: Paragraph 4 of Article 11 of the Revised Penal Code


provides, please wit:

Art. 11. Justifying circumstances – The following do not


incur any criminal liability:

x x x

4. Any person who, in order to avoid an evil or injury,


does not act which causes damage to another,
provided that the following requisites are present:

First. That the evil sought to be avoided actually


exists;

Second. That the injury feared be greater than


that done to avoid it;

Third. That there be no other practical and less


harmful means of preventing it.

x x x

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Dominic Oswald C. Halili
Legal Technique and Logic

Moreover, Article 248 of the Revised Penal Code further provides, to wit:

“Article 248. Murder. - Any person who, not falling


within the provisions of Article 246 shall kill another,
shall be guilty of murder and shall be punished by
reclusion temporal in its maximum period to death, if
committed with any of the following attendant
circumstances:

1. With treachery, taking advantage of superior


strength, with the aid of armed men, or employing
means to weaken the defense or of means or persons
to insure or afford impunity.

2. In consideration of a price, reward, or promise.

3. By means of inundation, fire, poison, explosion,


shipwreck, stranding of a vessel, derailment or
assault upon a street car or locomotive, fall of an
airship, by means of motor vehicles, or with the use of
any other means involving great waste and ruin.

4. On occasion of any of the calamities enumerated in


the preceding paragraph, or of an earthquake,
eruption of a volcano, destructive cyclone, epidemic or
other public calamity.

5. With evident premeditation.

6. With cruelty, by deliberately and inhumanly


augmenting the suffering of the victim, or outraging
or scoffing at his person or corpse.”

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Dominic Oswald C. Halili
Legal Technique and Logic

ARGUMENT: It is extremely imperative to emphasize the fact that the


miners were already starving to death when they were trapped in mining
cave. In order to survive and to preserve their selves, the accused essentially
would have to eat. Needless to state, A, B, C, and D were out of options but
to kill their co-miner E and eat his flesh. Ergo, when A, B, C, and D decided
to kill E and eat his flesh, their actuations are towards their self-
preservation, and therefore, should not be held liable for the crime charged.

The actuations of A, B, C and D is comparable with the wordings of


Samuel Butler which was cited in the case of Soplente vs. PEOPLE OF THE
PHILIPPINES, which says Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

In Connection to that, the Doctrine of State of Necessity should be


applied as all its essential elements concur in the case at bar. Firstly, the
existence of evil sought to be avoided exists when the perpetrators avoided
their impending doom. Secondly, the lives of 4 persons are greater than the
life of one. Lastly, there is no less harmful way but to eat human flesh of
since the sacrifice of one is very essential for the good of all.

Furthermore, none of the qualifying circumstances enumerated in


Article 248 of the Revised Penal Code were present in an instant case.

CONCLUSION: As things now stand and viewed in the light of the


foregoing premises, it would not be amiss to state as it becomes clear as it is
beyond cavil, therefore, that A, B, C and D were all justified in their act of
killing E and eating his flesh by raising the defense of state of necessity as
their means of survival, and nowhere in the given circumstances could it be
gleaned that their acts are similar to the instances enumerated under
Article 248 of the Revised Penal Code that would qualify the same to
murder.

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