This was done on December 10, 1971. Pascual, Morelos and Salvador voluntarily surrendered and pleaded not guilty at their arraignment. Gutierrez failed to appear despite notice, causing the forfeiture of the bond he had earlier filed. He was to re-surface later and plead his own erratic defense.

Two years afterwards, when the prosecution was ready to offer its exhibits, Gutierrez appeared and entered a plea of not guilty. He then moved to dismiss the charge against him, pointing out that the testimony of Rivas and Villa showed that it was Pascual who had shot Galgo.

In his decision dated November 17, 1975, Judge Alberto Q. Ubay found against all the accused and disposed as follows:

In addition, the decision awarded the sums of Pl 0,000.00 as moral damages, P72,000.00 as compensatory damages for loss of earnings for four years, P3,000.00 as exemplary damages, and P550.00 as actual damages.

All the defendants appealed. Gutierrez contended that he should not have been considered an accomplice because he had no prior knowledge of Pascual's intention to kill Galgo. For their part, Pascual, Morelos and Salvador faulted the trial court for giving credence to the prosecution witnesses and not to Gutierrez's testimony that Galgo was shot during their struggle for the gun.

We have said often enough—and we wifl say it again here—that much leeway is given to the trial court in assessing the credibility of the person testifying before him. Its conclusions on this matter are accorded great weight on appeal in the absence of a showing that they were reached arbitrarily.

The trial court has the opportunity to observe the demeanor of the witness on the stand and is able to ascertain therefrom whether he is telling the truth or lying in his teeth. The indicia of veraciousness or perjury-like the flush of face or the tone of voice or the dart of eyes or the fearful pause-are not discernible from the sterile record before the appellate court. The trial judge can see all these tell-tale signs. The line between fact and fabrication is writ large and bold for him. Informed by his own observations, he can be expected to determine, with reasonable discretion, whose testimony to accept and which witness to disbelieve.

We agree with the trial court that the prosecution's version of the killing of Olympio Galgo is more credible. Rivas and Villa could not simply have concocted their narration of how the victim was shot down in cold blood by Pascual after being manhandled by the other accused-appellants. Neither of these witnesses had any motive for testifying falsely against any of the defendants. On the contrary, they would have been naturally reluctant to do so, considering that the accused were all policemen who could easily retaliate against them.

Pascual asserted that Paula Salceda Galgo sought to implicate him because she was the partner of a woman who had vowed revenge against him when her massage parlor was raided by the police. This is preposterous. By his own admission, Pascual was not even among those who conducted the raid. Moreover, it is not believable that the widow would have sought to accuse an innocent man of the serious offense of murder just to gratify her partner's threat of vengeance.

The defense wonders why if they really saw Galgo in danger, Rivas and Villa did nothing at all to help him. Such inaction, it is averred, renders their testimony suspect. Let us not be naive. Rivas was merely an errand boy and Villa a waitress. It is understandable why they could not face up to the four armed policemen who were maltreating Galgo. How could these simple folk have dared to intervene when their own employer was helpless in his captors' hands?

There is too much nitpicking with the testimony of these witnesses, but the inconsistencies cited by the defense are not substantial enough to impair their credibility. Rivas was unable to specify the murder weapon because he was not familiar with firearms and did not know the difference between a pistol and a revolver. Regarding his delay in speaking up, he was in fact willing to give his swom statement earlier but it was the NBI that decided to take it only 42 days later. As for Villa, the discrepancy in the dates of her swom statement was explained by NBI agent Godofredo Ayetano as an honest typographical error. Her inability to remember the details of the incident, owing to the tension she felt at the time and the speed of the commission of the crime, did not detract from the essential veracity of her testimony.

By contrast, the evidence of the defense is a study in inventiveness.

To begin with, it is a curious coincidence that all four of the accused-appellants were together at 2 o'clock in the morning near the restaurant of the victim when the shouting occurred. Was there a special operation they were undertaking at that witching hour? They never said so nor have they satisfactorily explained why the victim was with them then in the gas station. The Court is asked to believe that Galgo had been arrested for hitting Baltao in the neck, but one may well wonder why such drastic action was being taken for such a minor offense, and a 2 o'clock in the morning. Four police officers no less, including major who was the Chief of the Administrative Bureau of the Kalookan City Police Department, effected the arrest of the lone and unarmed Galgo. It is also incredible that Galgo woul have tried to wrest the gun from Gutierrez after they had le his restaurant when, assuming he was disposed to resist, he could have done this while he was inside his own property an with his own relatives and employees to support him. The happenstance that Morante saw Pascual talking to someone in the Blue Sky Restaurant when they heard the fatal shot an Morelos saw Pascual leave the restaurant immediately after that shot is also too pat to be acceptable.

It would appear that Pascual's co-accused were only too eager to exculpate their superior even if their loyalty to him mean lying on the stand. As a major and the head of their special operations team, Pascual obviously exerted a great deal of official and also personal influence upon them.

And these henchmen included Gutierrez himself, although has rather ambivalent in his declarations. His flip-flopping betrays his unreliability as a witness, not to say a possible fear of Major Pascual that made him draw suspicion from his chief at the risk of his own conviction. But, for all his vacillations, he did not remain intimidated in the end. Revealingly, his final stance was to reject the role of the scapegoat and to insist that it was not he but Pascual who fired the shot that killed Galgo.

This is yet another one of those disturbingly growing number of cases where policemen, who are supposed to be the protectors of the people, have instead become their predators. The suggestion that the victim was killed because of his refusal to pay protection money to the accused makes their offense all the more execrable. It is conduct like this that has dissipated public confidence in the police, who are now often not looked upon with gratitude and confidence but looked down with suspicion and disdain. The policeman must exert earnest efforts to improve his image as a law-enforcement officer and prove to a long disenchanted public that the badge he wears is a badge of honor.

WHEREFORE, the decision of the trial court is partially AFFIRMED, with the modification that all the accused-appellants namely, Raymundo Pascual, Rustico Morelos, Mario Salvador, and Virgilio Gutierrez, as conspirators, are hereby declared equally guilty of the murder of Olympio Galgo. All of them are sentenced to the penalty of reclusion perpetua and shall be solidarity liable for the payment to the heirs of Olympio Galgo civil indemnity in the amount of P50,000.00 plus all the other monetary awards specified in the said decision.

SO ORDERED.

Narvasa (Acting C.J.), Feliciano, Griño-Aquino and Medialdea, JJ., concur.

Footnotes