Baleros v.

People (483 SCRA 10, February

22, 2006)
Posted on August 14, 2015 by kristinelaine
FACTS:
Herein petitioner Renato CHITO Baleros, Jr. seeks for the reversal of the Court of Appeals affirming
his conviction of attempted rape before the Manila RTC in 1991.
Petitioner was a medical student in UST at that time when he was accused of attempting to rape Malou
Albano, also a medical student in UST by covering the victims face with a piece of cloth covered with
a chemical inducing dizziness and unconsciousness and lying on top of Albano, pinning down its body.
The victim was able to escape such perpetrator when she had the chance to hold its sex organ,
squeezed it and thereafter ran away and sought help from its classmates who stays at room 310 of the
same floor and building where the victim lives.
Due to panic and the immediacy of her instinct to call for help, the only identification Albano was able
to recall from the perpetrator was that it was wearing a white cotton shirt and a dark short with a
smooth texture similar to that of satin. The following day, a white shirt and an addidas short with a
handkerchief- all garments covered with blue stain were retrieved from the bag owned by herein
petitioner. Several days before such incident, Chito confessed his feelings towards the victim but was
rejected by the latter. The security guard of the building, as well as the friends of Albano attested for
the prosecution.
ISSUE:
Whether the Court of Appeals erred in affirming RTC Manilas conviction of Baleros with attempted
rape amid the lack of proof its guilt without reasonable doubt.
HELD:
Yes. Although the Court does not identify the petitioner to be innocent of the acts imputed to him, such
acts were not substantial enough to convict him of attempted rape. For one, Baleros was not identified
through direct evidence but only from circumstantial identification (that is, from the congruence of
Albanos identification of what the perpetrator wore and the witnesses testimonies as to what Baleros
wore that night).
Article 335 in relation to Article 6 of the Revised Penal Code states the circumstances that shows overt
acts of a perpetrator in committing the crime of rape. Moreover, the Court has ruled in Perez v. CA that
in order for a crime of rape to have been committed in an attempted stage, the accused must have
commenced the act of penetrating the womans vagina with his sex organ but was not able to
completely do so due to some reason or accident other than his own spontaneous desistance.
Even with the acts of kissing the victim and mashing her breasts, the offense would not have
constituted attempted rape absent the accuseds commencement of penetrating the victims vagina with
his sex organ. In the present case, the perpetrator was even fully dressed when it attacked Albano. The
Court reversed and set aside the decision affirmed by the CA and adjudges Baleros guilty of unjust
vexation punishable as light coercion under article 287 of the RPC.