Title: The People of the Philippine Islands vs Magdalena Caliso, G.R. No.

L-
37271, July 1, 1933
Facts: Magdalena Caliso is accused of the crime of murder of a 9-month-old boy, in
La Carlota, Negros Occidental, on February 8 of this year, 1932. The complaint
alleges that the accused, being a servant of the Mr. and Mrs. Esmeralda, voluntarily,
illegally and criminally and with the purpose of satisfying a vengeance, administer a
certain amount of concentrated acetic acid, which is a poisonous substance, to
Emilio Esmeralda, Jr., a 9-month-old boy, causing him burns in the mouth, throat,
intestines and other vital parts of the internal organs that necessarily caused the
death of the victim, who succumbed a few hours later; that in the commission of this
crime, the aggravating circumstances of alevosia have concurred.

Days before this event, at the kitchen, Mrs. Esmeralda began to insult the accused
from head to toe, recriminating her for her immoral act in allowing her lover to hide
at the master’s bedroom. But the scolding did not stop there, after finding something
dirty in the pillow covers, Mrs. Esmeralda returned to the kitchen to reprimand her
again. These events triggered the accused into committing the crime as a revenge for
the insults received.
The Court was therefore not convinced by the accused’s theory that the child had an
indigestion for having ingested orange juice after drinking milk, and that the smell of
acetic acid could be derived from the vomiting of the kid by mixing it with orange
juice and milk.
The appellant, Magdalena Caliso, is found guilty of the crime of murder, and
considered the crime under aggravating circumstance of alevosia, because the child
was a defenseless being, and the circumstance of having performed the act in the
own residence of the victim's parents, having acted on the basis of impulses of a
feeling that has caused her outburst and obsession, condemns her to the penalty
of life imprisonment , to compensate the parents of the deceased in the sum of P1,000,
with the accessory of the law, and to pay the costs of the trial.
Issue: Whether or not the accused is guilty of the aggravating circumstance of grave
abuse of confidence.

Held: The Court agreed to the conclusions of fact reached by the trial court. The
aggravating circumstance of grave abuse of confidence was present since the
appellant was the domestic servant of the family and was sometimes the deceased
child's amah.

The circumstance of the crime having been committed in the dwelling of the offended
party, considered by the lower court as another aggravating circumstance, should be
disregarded as both the victim and the appellant were living in the same house.
Likewise, threachery cannot be considered to aggravate the penalty as it is inherent
in the offense of murder by means of poisoning.

The finding of the trial court that the appellant acted under an impulse so powerful
as naturally to have produced passion and obfuscation should be discarded because
the accused, in poisoning the child, was actuated more by a spirit of lawlessness and
revenge than by any sudden impulse of natural and uncontrollable fury and because
such sudden burst of passion was not provoked by prior unjust or improper acts of
the victim or of his parents, since Flora Gonzalez had the perfect right to reprimand
the defendant for indecently converting the family's bedroom into a rendezvous of
herself and her lover.

The aggravating circumstance of abuse of confidence being offset by the extenuating

circumstance of defendant's lack of instruction considered by the lower court, the
medium degree of the prescribed penalty should, therefore, be imposed, which, in
this case, is perpetual reclusion.