5. People vs Eschagaray.pdf - SUPREME COURT REPORTS...

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682 SUPREME COURT REPORTS ANNOTATED
People us. Echegaray
G.R. No. 117472. February 7, 1997.
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PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, plaintiff-appellee, vs. LEO
ECHEGARAY y PILO, accused-appellant.
Remedial Law; Appeal; Matters neither alleged in the pleadings nor
raised during the proceedings below cannot be ventilated for the first time
on appeal before the Supreme Court. —It is a rudimentary principle of law
that matters neither alleged in the pleadings nor raised during the
proceedings below cannot be ventilated for the first time on appeal before
the Supreme Court. Moreover, as we have stated in our Resolution in
Manila Bay Club Corporation v. Court of Appeals: “If well-recognized
jurisprudence precludes raising an issue only for the first time on appeal
proper, with more reason should such issue be disallowed or disregarded
when initially raised only in a motion for reconsideration of the decision of
the appellate court.”
Criminal Procedure; Affidavits; An affidavit of desistance is merely an
additional ground to buttress the accused’s defenses not the sole
consideration that can result in acquittal. —It must be stressed that during
the trial proceedings of the rape case against the ac-
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EN BANC.
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People vs. Echegaray
cused-appellant, it appeared that despite the admission made by the victim
herself in open court that she had signed an Affidavit of Desistance, she,
nevertheless, “strongly pointed out that she is not withdrawing the charge
against the accused because the latter might do the same sexual assaults to
other women.” Thus, this is one occasion where an affidavit of desistance

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must be regarded with disfavor inasmuch as the victim, in her tender age,
manifested in court that she was pursuing the rape charges against the
accusedappellant. We have explained in the case of People v. Gerry
Ballabare, that: “As pointed out in People v. Lim (190 SCRA 706 [1990],
which is also cited by the accused-appellant, an affidavit of desistance is
merely an additional ground to buttress the accused’s defenses, not the sole
consideration that can result in acquittal. There must be other circumstances
which, when coupled with the retraction or desistance, create doubts as to
the truth of the testimony given by the witnesses at the trial and accepted by
the judge.”
Constitutional Law; Death Penalty; Our courts are not the fora for a
protracted debate on the morality or propriety of the death sentence where
the law itself provides therefor in specific and welldefined criminal acts.—
Consequently, we have time and again emphasized that our courts are not
the fora for a protracted debate on the morality or propriety of the death
sentence where the law itself provides therefor in specific and well-defined
criminal acts. Thus we had ruled in the 1951 case of Limaco