This case has been cited 1 times or more.
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2007-11-28 |
TINGA, J, |
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| Four requisites must concur in order that a dying declaration may be admissible, thus: first, the declaration must concern the cause and surrounding circumstances of the declarant's death. This refers not only to the facts of the assault itself, but also to matters both before and after the assault having a direct causal connection with it. Statements involving the nature of the declarant's injury or the cause of death; those imparting deliberation and willfulness in the attack, indicating the reason or motive for the killing; justifying or accusing the accused; or indicating the absence of cause for the act are admissible.[40] Second, at the time the declaration was made, the declarant must be under the consciousness of an impending death. The rule is that, in order to make a dying declaration admissible, a fixed belief in inevitable and imminent death must be entered by the declarant. It is the belief in impending death and not the rapid succession of death in point of fact that renders the dying declaration admissible. It is not necessary that the approaching death be presaged by the personal feelings of the deceased. The test is whether the declarant has abandoned all hopes of survival and looked on death as certainly impending.[41] Third, the declarant is competent as a witness. The rule is that where the declarant would not have been a competent witness had he survived, the proffered declarations will not be admissible. Accordingly, declarations made by a child too young to be a competent witness or by a person who was insane or incapable of understanding his own statements by reason of partial unconsciousness are not admissible in evidence.[42] Thus, in the absence of evidence showing that the declarant could not have been competent to be a witness had he survived, the presumption must be sustained that he would have been competent.[43] Fourth, the declaration must be offered in a criminal case for homicide, murder, or parricide, in which the declarant is the victim.[44] Anent this requisite, the same deserves no further elaboration as, in fact, the prosecution had caused its witnesses to take the stand and testify in open court on the substance of Alexander's ante mortem statement in the present criminal case for murder. | |||||