PEOPLE VS. ALMANZAR
FACTS:
Accused-appellant was
charged with the crime of rape in an information which provides:
That on or about the 11th day of March 1994, in the
Municipality of Makati, Metro Manila, Philippines and within the jurisdiction
of this Honorable Court, the above-named accused, with lewd designs, did then
and there willfully, unlawfully and feloniously abduct, take and carry away the
herein complainant while walking along Makati Avenue, Ayala Center, Makati,
Metro Manila near Landmark Department Store on her way to Jollibee, Greenbelt
Branch, where she works as a service crew, by means of force, violence and
intimidation, to wit: by introducing himself as a Marikina police, poking a
handgun on the left side of the complainant's body, and then pulling her and
forcing her to board inside the front passenger seat of the accused' car and
threatening to shoot her and brought her to a secluded area within Makati,
where said accused at gunpoint and intimidation, ordered herein complainant to
undress by taking off her T-shirt, pants and panty, and by means of force,
violence and intimidation, succeeded in having sexual intercourse with her
against her will.1âwphi1.nêt
Contrary to law.1
Almanzar was then
convicted of the offense charged against him. Hence the present review because
of the death penalty. One issues raised by the accused was that the lower court
erred in convicting accused-appellant on the ground that he was positively
identified by complainant. Accused-appellant primarily assails the testimony of
Sally, the complainant in this case. At the outset, he (accused-appellant)
impugns Sally's positive identification of him as her assailant. Specifically,
accused-appellant assails the police line-up where he was identified by the
complainant claiming that police line-ups are inherently unreliable as they are
"peculiarly riddled with innumerable dangers and variable factors."25 Moreover, the identification of
accused-appellant during the police line-up is allegedly inadmissible in
evidence being a fruit of an illegal arrest and violative of
accused-appellant's constitutional right to counsel.
HELD:
Accused-appellant's allegation with respect to the conduct of
the police line-up is futile. That he was without counsel at the time of the
police line-up does not render the same irregular or invalid. The guarantees of
Section 12(1), Article III of the 1987 Constitution, or the so-called Miranda
rights, may be invoked only by a person while he is under custodial
investigation. Custodial
investigation starts when the police investigation is no longer a general
inquiry into an unsolved crime but has begun to focus on a particular suspect
taken into custody by the police who starts the interrogation and propounds
questions to the person to elicit incriminating statements. A police line-up is
not part of the custodial investigation; hence, the right to counsel cannot yet
be invoked at this stage.
It appears from the record that accused-appellant was not under custodial investigation when he was brought to the