Manila
EN BANC
G.R. No. L-37720 March 27, 1933
THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, plaintiff-appellee,
vs.
URSULA SENSANO and MARCELO RAMOS, defendants-appellants.
Emilio L. Medina for appellants.
Attorney-General Jaranilla for appellee.
BUTTE, J.:
The appellants were sentenced by the Court of First Instance of Ilocos Norte for the crime of adultery
to three years, six months and twenty-one days of prision correccional and appealed to this court,
assigning the following error: "The court below erred in not holding that the offended husband
contested to the adultery committed by his wife Ursula Sensano in that he refused to live with her
after she extinguished her previous sentence for the same offense, and by telling her then that she
could go where she wanted to and do what she pleased, and by his silence for seven years
notwithstanding that he was informed of said adultery."
The facts briefly stated as follows:
Ursula Sensano and Mariano Ventura were married on April 29, 1919. They had one child. Shortly
after the birth of his child, the husband left his wife to go to the Province of Cagayan where he
remained for three years without writing to his wife or sending her anything for the support of herself
and their son. Poor and illiterate, without relatives upon whom she could call, she struggled for an
existence for herself and her son until a fatal day when she met the accused Marcelo Ramos who
took her and the child to live with him. On the return of the husband (in 1924), he filed a charge
against his wife and Marcelo Ramos for adultery and both were sentenced to four months and one
day of arresto mayor. The court, in its decision, stated the following: "In the opinion of the court, the
husband of the accused has been somewhat cruel in his treatment of his wife having abandoned her
as he did." After completing her sentence, the accused left her paramour. She thereupon appealed
to this municipal president and the justice of the peace to send for her husband so that she might
ask his pardon and beg him to take her back. At the house of the president she begged his pardon
and promised to be a faithful wife it he would take care her back. He refused to pardon her to live
with her and said she could go where she wished, that he would have nothing more to do with her,
and she could do as she pleased. Abandoned for the second time, she and her child went back to
her coaccused Marcelo Ramos (this was in the year 1924) and they have lived with him ever since.
The husband, knowing that she resumed living with her codefendant in 1924, did nothing to interfere
with their relations or to assert his rights as husband. Shortly thereafter he left for the Territory of
Hawaii where she remained for seven years completely abandoning his said wife and child. On his
return to these Islands, he presented the second charge of adultery here involved with the sole
purpose, as he declared, of being able to obtain a divorce under the provisions of Act No. 2710.
Article 344 of the Revised Penal Code, paragraphs 1 and 2, are as follows:
Prosecution of the crimes of adultery, concubinage, seduction, abduction, rape and acts of
lasciviousness. — The crimes of adultery and concubinage shall not be prosecuted except
upon a complaint filed by the offended spouse.
The offended party cannot institute criminal prosecution without including both the guilty
parties, if they are both alive, nor, in any case, if he shall have consented or pardoned the
offenders.
Apart from the fact that the husband in this case was assuming a mere pose when he signed the
complaint as the "offended" spouse, we have come to the conclusion that the evidence in this case
and his conduct warrant the inference that he consented to the adulterous relations existing between
the accused and therefore he is not authorized by law to institute this criminal proceeding.
We cannot accept the argument of the Attorney-General that the seven years of acquiescence on
his part in the adultery of his wife is explained by his absence from the Philippine Islands during
which period it was impossible for him to take any action against the accused. There is no merit in
the argument that it was impossible for the husband to take any action against the accused during
the said seven years.
The judgment below is reversed with costs de oficio.
Street and Ostrand, JJ., concur.
