People v Bandian

GR No. 45186, September 30, 1936

Facts:

One morning, Valentin Aguilar saw his neighbor, Josefina Bandian, got to a thicket apparently to
respond to the call of nature. Few minutes later, Bandian emerged from the thicket with her
clothes stained with blood both in the front and back, staggering and visibly showing signs of not
being able to support herself. Rushing to her aid, he brought her to her house and placed her on
the bed. He called on Adriano Comcom to help them. Comcom saw the body of a newborn baby
near a path adjoining the thicket where the appellant had gone a few moments before. She
claimed it was hers. Dr. Emilio Nepomuceno, the president of the sanitary division, declared that
the appellant gave birth in her own house and throw her child into the thicket to kill it. The trial
court gave credit to his opinion.

Issue:
Whether Bandian is guilty of infanticide.

Ruling:
The Court ruled in contrast. Infanticide and abandonment of a minor, to be punishable must be
committed willfully and consciously, or at least it must be the result of a voluntary, conscious
and free act or omission. The evidence does not show that the appellant, in causing her child’s
death in one way or another, or in abandoning it in the thicket, did so willfully, consciously or
imprudently. She had no cause to kill or abandon it, to expose it to death, because her affair
with a former love, which was not unknown to her second lover, Kirol, took place three years
before the incident, her married life with Kirol – she considers him her husband as he considers
him his wife – began a year ago; as he so testified at the trial, he knew of the pregnancy and
that it was his and that they’ve been eagerly awaiting the birth of the child. The appellant, thus,
had no cause to be ashamed of her pregnancy to Kirol.

The law exempts from criminal liability any person who acts under the circumstances in which
the appellant acted in this case, by giving birth to a child in the thicket and later abandoning it,
not because of imprudence or any other cause than that she was overcome by severe dizziness
and extreme debility, with no fault or intention on her part. She has in her favor the fourth and
the seventh exempting circumstances.

In conclusion, taking into account the foregoing facts and considerations, and granting that the
appellant was aware of her involuntary childbirth in the thicket and that she later failed to take
her child therefrom, having been so prevented by reason of causes entirely independent of her
will, the Court acquits her of the crime of infanticide.