7. PEOPLE v.

CEREDON

FACTS:

Appellant Ceredon was indicted for 10 counts of rape for raping AAA, his 10yo sister. The 1 st rape
incident was sometime in 1995 in Cagayan. Appellant pulled her away to a room where he tied her
hands together behind her back with a rope, then raped her. The second incident was when AAA was
tending to their youngest brother when Elmer summoned her to extract his armpit hairs. He dragged
her inside a room and raped her. AAA was raped until she reached the age of 15. Later Elmer was
charged with 10 counts of rape.

RTC: Convicted Elmer of all the counts of rape charges and to suffer the supreme penalty of
"DEATH" in each of the ten (10) criminal information.

CA: affirmed RTC’s judgement with modifications as to damages.

Appellant claims that the trial court based its ruling of conviction on his "improvident plea of guilt,"
relying on Section 3, Rule 116 of the Rules of Court. He argues that when he was re-arraigned and
he pleaded "guilty" to all ten charges against him, he was not fully apprised of the consequences of
his change of plea from "not guilty" to "guilty."

ISSUES:

(1) W/N the TC erred in convicting the accused appellant considering that the informations failed
to sufficiently establish with particularity the DATES of the commission of the offense.
(2) W/N the TC erred in imposing death penalty as the qualifying circumstance that the accused
is a relative within the 2nd degree of consanguinity (brother) was not properly alleged.

RULING:

(1) NO. Exact dates of commission need not be alleged. It is enough for the information or
complaint to state that the crime has been committed at a time as near as possible to the date
of its actual commission. Failure to allege the exact date when the crime happened does not
render the information defective, much less void. An information is valid as long as it
distinctly states the elements of the offense and the constitutive acts or omissions. The
exact date of the commission of a crime is not an essential element of it. The date or
time of the commission of rape is not a material ingredient of the said crime because
the gravamen of rape is carnal knowledge of a woman through force and intimidation.
(2) NO. Relationship as qualifying circumstance may be alleged in layman's terms. There was NO
defect in the Informations when they merely averred that the victim was the youngest sister of
appellant. The present case is not within this contemplation of the ruling in Ferolino case
considering that in the Ferolino case, the victim is a niece of the offender while in the present
case the victim is a sister of the offender. It was deemed necessary in the Ferolino case to
require that it must be specifically alleged in the Information that the offender is "a relative by
consanguinity or affinity (as the case may be) within the third civil degree" because we
acknowledge the fact that there are niece-uncle relationships which are beyond the third
civil degree. However, a sister-brother relationship is obviously in the second civil
degree and no other sister-brother relationship exists in civil law that falls beyond the
third civil degree. Consequently, it is not necessary in this case that the Information should
specifically state that the appellant is a relative by consanguinity within the third civil degree of
the victim. Perusing the ten (10) Informations for rape, private complainant AAA was
categorically identified as appellant's younger sister. Verily, the requirement of allegation as to
relationship was more than satisfied.