By Nikko Dizzon
Philippine Daily Inquirer
(Note: Raped when she was 13 years old).
The Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence imposed on a man who raped a teenage girl in front of her mother nearly 10 years ago.
Montano Flores was originally sentenced to death by the Gumaca Regional Trial Court in 2004 but the Court of Appeals sentenced him to "reclusion perpetua" in 2006 after then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo abolished the death penalty. Reclusion perpetua is from 20 years and one day to 40 years in prison.
Flores went to the Supreme Court claiming that the lower court had made a mistake in sentencing him to death because his victim, the daughter of his live-in partner, was not a minor at the time of the incident as she and her mother had claimed.
The Supreme Court’s First Division said the appellate court had “correctly ruled†that Flores “cannot escape the penalty of death.â€
“Flores forgot the important fact that aside from (the victim's) minority, the qualifying circumstance that the rape was committed in full view of (her) mother was also alleged in the (charge sheet),†said the high court decision penned by Justice Teresita Leonardo-de Castro.
The court said that aside from having a minor for a victim, another aggravating circumstance for imposing the death penalty was if the rape was “committed in full view of the spouse, parent, any of the children or other relative within the third civil degree of consanguinity.â€
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