September 6, 1991
Medialdea, J.
FACTS
Pelagia Panlino de Chin assisted Honorio Carpio in withdrawing cash proceeds from an apparently fake check.
Modus: De Chin presented a Midland National Bank Cashier's check worth $5200 payable to Carpio's savings account, which was created earlier with an initial deposit of P50. Upon assuring Mr. Cruz of Pacific Banking Corporation that the check will be honored by the two banks, a notice was sent to Carpio indicating that the proceeds of the check amounting to P92,557 had already been credited to his account.
Subsequently, the money was withdrawn by De Chin, first for P12,607, then 80,000.44, after which she closed Carpio's account.
Francis Lee, the PBC Branch Manager, was not present when this scam was perpetrated.
After discovering what happened, Lee had De Chin fetched from her house in Caloocan. De Chin waited for an hour at the bank before Lee confronted her.
During the said confrontation, the petitioner Francis Lee was shouting at De Chin with piercing looks and threatened to file charges against her unless and until she returned all the money equivalent of the subject cashier check. Accordingly, the complainant was caused to sign a prepared withdrawal slip, and later, an affidavit prepared by the bank's lawyer, where she was made to admit that she had swindled the bank and had return the money equivalent of the spurious check. During her stay at the said bank, the complainant, who was five (5) months in the family way, was watched by the bank's employees and security guards. It was about six o'clock in the afternoon of the same day when the complainant was able to leave the bank premises.
De Chin filed a case against Lee for grave coercion, for which Lee was found guilty.
Whether or not Lee is guilty of grave coercion. - NO.
RULING
The Court finds that complainant's lengthy stay at the bank was not due to the petitioner's threat. It was rather due to her desire to prove her innocence.
Moreover, while complainant claimed that her freedom of movement was restrained, she, however, was able to move about freely unguarded from the office of the petitioner situated at the ground floor to the office of Cruz at the mezzanine floor where her sister found her.
The most telling proof of the absence of intimidation was the fact that the complainant refused to sign the promissory note in spite of the alleged threats of the petitioner. American authorities have declared that "(t)he force which is claimed to have compelled criminal conduct against the will of the actor must be immediate and continuous and threaten grave danger to his person during all of the time the act is being committed. That is, it must be a dangerous force threatened 'in praesenti.' It must be a force threatening great bodily harm that remains constant in controlling the will of the unwilling participant while the act is being performed and from which he cannot then withdraw in safety." (State v. Hood, 165 NE 2d, 28, 31-32,).
There was no coercion in this case. Therefore, petitioner Lee should be acquitted.