THE Court of Appeals (CA) threw out the appeal of a former soldier who challenged his conviction for frustrated murder in connection with a Christmas Eve videoke shooting incident in Pangasinan 12 years ago.
In a decision promulgated on August 28, 2025, the appellate court’s tenth division upheld the conviction of former Master Sergeant Jackson Martinez after he was positively and consistently identified by witness Bernabe Bautista Sr. as the one who shot his neighbor, Gerald Bautista, in the head during a Christmas Eve fight over loud videoke singing.
The Urdaneta City Regional Trial Court sentenced Martinez to imprisonment of four to 10 years.
Court records showed the incident took place after a fight erupted between Martinez’s sister, Mary Christine Ybañez, and Bautista’s aunt, Celedonia Bautista-Westwood, who asked the former to lower the volume of her family’s videoke singing.
The trial court found that the Ybañez brothers, including Martinez, lost their temper when they considered Westwood’s remark asking their sister to lower her voice to be insulting.
According to trial records, Martinez fired his gun in the direction of the house where the members of the Bautista family were seated, hitting Gerald in the head.
Gerald survived the shooting, but it left him paralyzed.
In his defense, Martinez claimed the prosecution’s witness did not identify him as the shooter.
He also claimed that the testimonies about where the bullet hit the victim were inconsistent with the doctor’s findings.
But the appellate court held otherwise and upheld Bautista’s testimony.
The CA, in upholding Martinez’s conviction, gave greater weight to Bernabe’s consistent testimony and identification of Martinez as the one who shot his nephew.
“More importantly, Bernabe Sr. is the uncle of the victim and it would be unnatural for him, being a relative and interested in vindicating the crime, to implicate someone other than the real culprit lest the guilty go unpunished,” read part of the CA ruling penned by Associate Justice Pedro Corales.
“The earnest desire to seek justice for a kin is not served should the witness abandon his or her conscience and prudence, and blame one who is innocent of the crime,” the CA added.
However, the CA modified the damages the RTC awarded to the victim; it reduced the moral damages from P500,000 to P30,000 and did away with the P30,000 in exemplary damages as it held that there were no aggravating circumstances in the crime.
However, it allowed the RTC’s award of P1.5 million in actual damages and P30,000 in civil indemnity to the victim.
