People vs.

Borinaga

Facts:
The victim Harry Mooney, an American who resided in Calubian Leyte,
contracted with Juan Lawaan for the construction of a fish corral. Lawaan
attempted to collect the whole amount of the contract even though the corral
is not yet finished. Upon Mooney‘s refusal to pay, Lawaan warned and
threatened him that something would happen to him.

On that evening, Mooney was in the store of his neighbor, sitting with his back
towards a window when suddenly Basilio Borinaga struck him with a knife. The
knife imbedded on the back of the seat though. Mooney fell off from the
impact but was not injured. Borinaga left the scene but after ten minutes, he
returned to have another attempt at Mooney but was warded off by Mooney
and his neighbor frightening him by turning a flashlight on him.

Issue:
Whether or not the crime is frustrated murder.

Held:
YES. As an essential condition of a frustrated crime, Borinaga performed all the
acts of execution, attending the attack. There was nothing left that he could do
further to accomplish the work. The cause resulting in the failure of the attack
arose by reason of forces independent of his will. Borinaga also voluntarily
desisted from further acts. The subjective phase of the criminal act was passed.

Dissenting opinion, J. Villa-Real:

“The acts of execution perfomed by [Borinaga] did not produce the death of
Mooney as a consequence not could they have produced it because the blow
did not reach his body; therefore, the culprit did not perform all the acts of
execution which should produce the felony. There was lacking the infliction of
the deadly wound upon a vital spot of the body of Mooney.”
What the back of the chair prevented was the wounding of Mooney, not his
death. It is the preventing of death by causes independent of the will of the
perpetrator, after all the acts of execution which should produce the felony as a
consequence had been performed, that constitutes a frustrated felony,
according to the law, and not the preventing of the performances of all the
acts of execution which constitute a felony, as in the present case.
Attempted murder only.