PEOPLE vs MANABAN When the accused invokes self-defense, he in effect admits killing the victim and the burden

is shifted to him to prove that he killed the victim to save his life. 27 The accused must establish by clear and convincing evidence that all the requisites of self-defense are present.28 Under paragraph 1, Article 11 of the Revised Penal Code, the three requisites to prove self-defense as a justifying circumstance which may exempt an accused from criminal liability are: (1) unlawful aggression on the part of the victim; (2) reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel the aggression; and (3) lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the accused or the person defending himself.29 Unlawful aggression is an indispensable requisite of self-defense.30 Self-defense is founded on the necessity on the part of the person being attacked to prevent or repel the unlawful aggression.31 Thus, without prior unlawful and unprovoked attack by the victim, there can be no complete or incomplete self-defense.32 Unlawful aggression is an actual physical assault or at least a threat to attack or inflict physical injury upon a person.33 A mere threatening or intimidating attitude is not considered unlawful aggression,34 unless the threat is offensive and menacing, manifestly showing the wrongful intent to cause injury.35 There must be an actual, sudden, unexpected attack or imminent danger thereof, which puts the defendants life in real peril.36 In this case, there was no unlawful aggression on the part of the victim. First, Bautista was shot at the back as evidenced by the point of entry of the bullet. Second, when Bautista was shot, his gun was still inside a locked holster and tucked in his right waist. Third, when Bautista turned his back at Manaban, Manaban was already pointing his service firearm at Bautista. These circumstances clearly belie Manabans claim of unlawful aggression on Bautista's part

inceptual/unlawful aggression ceases to exist, the one making a defense has no right to kill or injure the former aggressor. After the danger has passed, one is not justified in following up his adversary to take his life. RAZON vs. PEOPLE

To escape liability, the person claiming self-defense must show by sufficient, satisfactory and convincing evidence that: (1) the victim committed unlawful aggression amounting to actual or imminent threat to the life and limb of the person claiming self-defense; (2) there was reasonable necessity in the means employed to prevent or repel the unlawful aggression; and (3) there was lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person claiming self-defense or at least any provocation executed by the person claiming selfdefense was not the proximate and immediate cause of the victim's aggression It is settled that the moment the first aggressor runs away, unlawful aggression on the part of the first aggressor ceases to exist; and when unlawful aggression ceases, the defender no longer has any right to kill or wound the former aggressor; otherwise, retaliation and not self-defense is committed. Retaliation is not the same as self-defense. In retaliation, the aggression that was begun by the injured party already ceased when the accused attacked him, while in self-defense the aggression was still existing when the aggressor was injured by the accused The defense employed by petitioner also cannot be said to be reasonable. The means employed by a person claiming self-defense must be commensurate to the nature and the extent of the attack sought to be averted, and must be rationally necessary to prevent or repel an unlawful aggression.55 The nature or quality of the weapon; the physical condition, the character, the size and other circumstances of the aggressor as well as those of the person who invokes self-defense; and the place and the occasion of the assault also define the reasonableness of the means used in self-defense

SENOJA vs. PEOPLE

The affirmative defense of self-defense may be complete or incomplete. It is complete when all the three essential requisites are present; it is incomplete if only unlawful aggression on the part of the victim and any of the two essential requisites were present. In fine, unlawful aggression on the part of the victim is a condition sine qua non to self-defense, complete or incomplete. Whether or not the accused acted in self-defense is a question of fact. Like alibi, the affirmative defense of self-defense is inherently weak because, as experience has demonstrated, it is easy to fabricate and difficult to disprove. Self-defense excuses the repulse of a wrong; necessity justifies the invasion of a right. It is a settled rule that to constitute aggression, the person attacked must be confronted by a real threat on his life and limb; and the peril sought to be avoided is imminent and actual, not merely imaginary. Absent such an actual or imminent peril to ones life or limb, there is nothing to repel; there is no necessity to take the life or inflict injuries on another. But then what is the standard to use to determine whether the person defending himself is confronted by a real and imminent peril to his life or limb? We rule that the test should be: does the person invoking the defense believe, in due exercise of his reason, his life or limb is in danger? After all, the rule of law founded on justice and reason: Actus no facit remin, nisi mens sit rea. Hence, the guilt of the accused must depend upon the circumstances as they reasonably appear to him Unlawful aggression presupposes an actual, sudden, unexpected attack or imminent danger thereof, not merely a threatening or intimidating attitude.16 Hence, when an

PEOPLE vs ORIENTE

Provocation is defined to be any unjust or improper conduct or act of the offended party, capable of exciting, inciting, or irritating anyone. In order to be mitigating, provocation must be sufficient and should immediately precede the act. Provocation is sufficient if it is adequate to excite a person to commit the wrong, which must accordingly be proportionate in gravity. That the provocation must immediately precede the act means that there should not be any interval of time between the provocation by the offended party and the commission of the crime by the person provoked

PEOPLE vs. BOHOLST-CABALLERO

All the elements of self-defense are indeed present in the instant case. The element of unlawful aggression has been clearly established as pointed out above. The second element, that is, reasonable necessity for the means employed is likewise present. Here we have a woman who being strangled and choked by a furious aggressor and rendered almost unconscious by the strong pressure on her throat had no other recourse but to get hold of any weapon within her reach to save herself from impending death. Early jurisprudence of this Court has followed the principle that the reasonable necessity of the means employed in self-defense does not depend upon the harm done but rests upon the imminent danger of such injury. (U.S. vs. Paras, 1907, 9 Phil. 367, citing Decision of Dec. 22, 1887) And so the fact that there was no visible injury caused on the body of the appellant which necessitated

medical attention, a circumstance noted by the trial court, is no ground for discrediting self-defense; what is vital is that there was imminent peril to appellant's life caused by the unlawful aggression of her husband. The knife tucked in her husband's belt afforded appellant the only reasonable means with which she could free and save herself from being strangled and choked to death. What this Court expressed in the case of People vs. Lara, 1925, 48 Phil. 153, 160, is very true and applicable to the situation now before Us, and We quote: It should be borne in mind that in emergencies of this kind human nature does not act upon processes of formal reason but in obedience to the instinct of self-preservation; and when it is apparent, as in this case, that a person has reasonably acted upon this instinct, it is the duty of the courts to sanction the act and to hold the actor irresponsible in law for the consequences. 16 Equally relevant is the time-honored principle: Necessitas Non habet legem. Necessity knows no law. The third element of self-defense is lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending himself.Provocation is sufficient when it is proportionate to the aggression, that is, adequate enough to impel one to attack the person claiming selfdefense. 17 Undoubtedly appellant herein did not give sufficient provocation to warrant the aggression or attack on her person by her husband, Francisco. While it was understandable for Francisco to be angry at his wife for finding her on the road in the middle of the night, however, he was not justified in inflicting bodily punishment with an intent to kill by choking his wife's throat. All that appellant did was to provoke an imaginary commission of a wrong in the mind of her husband, which is not a sufficient provocation under the law of selfdefense. Upon being confronted by her husband for being out late at night, accused gave a valid excuse that she went carolling with some friends to earn some money for their child. January 2 was indeed within the Christmas season during which by tradition people carol from house to house and receive monetary gifts in a Christian spirit of goodwill. The deceased therefore should have given some consideration to his wife's excuse before jumping to conclusions and taking the extreme measure of attempting to kill his wife. PEOPLE vs ALCONGA

To so hold would, we believe, be unjustifiably extending the doctrine of the Rivera case to an extreme not therein contemplated. PEOPLE vs SUMICAD

It is undoubtedly well established in jurisprudence that a man is not, as a rule, justified in taking the life of one who assaults him with his fist only, without the use of a dangerous weapon. The person assaulted must, in such case, either resist with the arms that nature gave him or with other means of defense at his disposal, short of taking life. But that rule contemplates the situation where the contestants are in the open and the person assaulted can exercise the option of running away. It can have no binding force in the case where the person assaulted has retreated to the wall, as the saying is, and uses in a defensive way the only weapon at his disposal. One is not required, when hard pressed, to draw fine distinctions as to the extent of the injury which a reckless and infuriated assailant might probably inflict upon him (Browell vs. People, 38 Mich., 732). And it was not incumbent on the accused in this case, when assailed by a bully of known violent disposition, who was larger and stronger than himself. On the contrary, under the circumstances stated, he had the right to resist the aggression with the bolo, and if he unfortunately inflicted a fatal blow, it must be considered to have been given in justifiable self-defense. Upon this point it may be recalled that the deceased, when asked about the circumstances of the homicide, admitted that he himself was the aggressor; and it is noteworthy that he used no word placing blame upon the accused.

PEOPLE vs, GENOSA

"a fleeing man is not dangerous to the one from whom he flees." If the law, as interpreted and applied by this Court in the Vitug case, enjoins the victorious contender from pursuing his opponent on the score of self-defense, it is because this Court considered that the requisites of selfdefense had ceased to exist, principal and indispensable among these being the unlawful aggression of the opponent It is true that in the case of United States vs. Rivera (41 Phil., 472, 474), this Court held that one defending himself or his property from a felony violently or by surprise threatened by another is not obliged to retreat but may pursue his adversary until he has secured himself from danger. But that is not this case. Here from the very start appellant was the holder of the stronger and more deadly weapons a revolver and a bolo, as against a piece of bamboo called "pingahan" and a dagger in the possession of the deceased. In actual performance appellant, from the very beginning, demonstrated his superior fighting ability; and he confirmed it when after the deceased was first felled down by the revolver shot in right breast, and after both combatants had gotten up and engaged in a hand-to-hand fight, the deceased using his dagger and appellant his bolo, the former received several bolo wounds while the latter got through completely unscathed. And when the deceased thereupon turned and fled, the circumstances were such that it would be unduly stretching the imagination to consider that appellant was still in danger from his defeated and fleeing opponent. Appellant preserved his revolver and his bolo, and if he could theretofore so easily overpower the deceased, when the latter had not yet received any injury, it would need, indeed, an unusually strong positive showing which is completely absent from the record to persuade us that he had not yet "secured himself from danger" after shooting his weakly armed adversary in the right breast and giving him several bolo slashes in different other parts of his body.

The Court, however, is not discounting the possibility of selfdefense arising from the battered woman syndrome. We now sum up our main points. First, each of the phases of the cycle of violence must be proven to have characterized at least two battering episodes between the appellant and her intimate partner. Second, the final acute battering episode preceding the killing of the batterer must have produced in the battered person's mind an actual fear of an imminent harm from her batterer and an honest belief that she needed to use force in order to save her life. Third, at the time of the killing, the batterer must have posed probable -- not necessarily immediate and actual -- grave harm to the accused, based on the history of violence perpetrated by the former against the latter. Taken altogether, these circumstances could satisfy the requisites of self-defense. Under the existing facts of the present case, however, not all of these elements were duly established.

PEOPLE vs LUAGUE

Natividad Luague's act in mortally wounding Paulino Disuasido, unaided her husband and co-accused Wenceslao Alcansare, and in the circumstances above set out, constitutes the exempting circumstance defined in article 11, subsection 1, of the Revised Penal Code, because, as stated by a commentator of note, "aside from the right to life on which rest the legitimate defense of our person, we have the right to party acquired by us, and the right to honor which is not the least prized of man's patrimony." (1 Viada, 172, 173, 5th edition.) "Will the attempt to rape a woman constitute an aggression sufficient to put her in a state of legitimate defense?" asks the same commentator. "We think so," he answer, "inasmuch as a woman's honor cannot but be esteemed as a right as precious, if not more, cannot her very existence; this offense, unlike ordinary slander by word or deed susceptible of judicial redress, in an outrage which impresses an indelible blot on the victim, for, as the Roman Law says:quum virginitas, vel castitas, corupta restitui non protest (because virginity or chastity, once defiled, cannot be

restored). It is evident that a woman who, imperiled, wounds, nay kills the offender, should be afforded exemption from criminal liability provided by this article and subsection since such killing cannot be considered a crime from the moment it became the only means left for her to protect her honor from so great an outrage." (1 Viada, 301, 5th edition.) PEOPLE vs DELA CRUZ As long as there is actual danger of being raped, a woman is justified in killing her aggressor, in the defense of her honor. Thus, where the deceased grabbed the defendant in a dark night at about 9 o'clock, in an isolated barrio trail, holding her firmly from behind, without warning and without revealing his identity, and, in the struggle that followed, touched her private parts, and that she was unable to free herself by means of her strength alone, she was considered justified in making use of a pocket knife in repelling what she believed to be an attack upon her honor, and which ended in his death, since she had no other means of defending herself, and consequently exempt from all criminal liability PEOPLE vs JAURIGUE According to the facts established by the evidence and found by the learned trial court in this case, when the deceased sat by the side of defendant and appellant on the same bench, near the door of the barrio chapel and placed his hand on the upper portion of her right thigh, without her consent, the said chapel was lighted with electric lights, and there were already several people, about ten of them, inside the chapel, including her own father and the barrio lieutenant and other dignitaries of the organization; and under the circumstances, there was and there could be no possibility of her being raped. And when she gave Amado Capina a thrust at the base of the left side of his neck, inflicting upon him a mortal wound 4 1/2 inches deep, causing his death a few moments later, the means employed by her in the defense of her honor was evidently excessive; and under the facts and circumstances of the case, she cannot be legally declared completely exempt from criminal liability..