The defendants in  this case were accused of a violation of the Election Law in having carried away, illegally and criminally, certain  papers, together with  the ballot  boxes containing the ballots used in the election on the 5th day of November, 1907, abstracting the same from  a wardrobe in which they were locked in the office of the  municipal secretary in the presidencia of Sanchez Mira in the Province of Cagayan.  They were  convicted of the crime charged and  were severally condemned each to  three months' imprisonment and to pay one-third of the costs of the action. The defendants appealed.

It appears clearly established from the proofs in this case that on the 5th day of November, 1907, a general election was held in the municipality of Sanchez Mira in the Province of  Cagayan.  In  said election  Felipe Navarro and Juan Academia were  opposing candidates for the office  of municipal president and Mariano Acuña and Cosme Marzan were opposing candidates for the office of municipal vice-president.   Upon  a  count of the  ballots  by the board of inspectors  after the polls were closed, it was found that Juan Academia  had  been  elected  president and Cosme Marzan  vice-president of said municipality.  At about 8 o'clock in the evening after the count had been made, the inspectors  delivered to the municipal secretary, Liberato Lopez, some blank ballots and other papers, together with the ballot boxes used in said election, which ballot boxes, duly locked and sealed, contained the ballots voted at said election.   The  said municipal secretary, finding his office locked with a padlock, the key of which was in the possession of his clerk, sent word to the latter, and, after waiting an hour or so, the  inspectors being in a hurry and the clerk not appearing, Lopez took an iron bar from the door and the policeman,  Antonio Pulido, broke the lock on the door, obtaining by this method entrance to the office.  The municipal secretary  put into his  wardrobe  the papers and the ballot boxes and locked the  wardrobe with a key which he took away with him to the house of Felipe Navarro, where he was stopping.  He first,  however, charged the chief of police that  he  keep  careful watch of  the office inasmuch as one of the bars of the door was  broken.  At about  10 o'clock of the same night, the 5th of November, 1907, while said Liberato Lopez  was chatting with his landlord, there came to the house where he was the two brothers, Lazaro Pulido and Antonio Pulido, the latter saying  that they came to get an empty demijohn which was inside  of Lopez's room.  He entered the room on the pretext of getting the demijohn and soon came out again, but without the  demijohn.  Both of the brothers  then left the house.  On going to bed that night Lopez looked for the keys to the wardrobe in order to place them under his pillow, as was his custom, and  found  that they  had  disappeared.   He  immediately went to  the municipal building, where,  on  arriving, he found open the door  of the wardrobe in which he had left the  papers and  the ballot boxes under lock and key.  Looking in the wardrobe he found that the ballot boxes and some of  the  papers were  gone.   He  immediately went  to the justice  of  the peace  to give information  of the  fact,  returning immediately to the office, accompanied by the justice and the chief of police, Petronilo Gumabay, and a member of the Constabulary.   On arriving at the municipal building they verified the  fact that the wardrobe was open and the ballot  boxes gone.   They searched in  every  corner  of the  office but in vain.   The  ballot  boxes  were not to  be found.  From the municipal  building,  on the invitation of the justice of the peace, Lopez and his companions went to the office  of the justice for the purpose of reducing  to writing the  facts of the case.  Not  having in  his office either ink  or paper, they returned to the secretary's office in the municipal building and, on arriving there the second time, they  found beneath the table in  the secretary's office the said ballot boxes, with the locks intact.   Some of the papers  were scattered  about and the seals of the ballot boxes, having on them  the initials of  the president of the board of inspectors, torn, so  that, in spite  of the fact that the ballot  boxes  were locked, yet it was  possible to put ballots  into  the  boxes by means  of the  openings from which the seals had been torn.  The election being subsequently protested  by  Felipe. Navarro  under the  direction of the accused Salustiano Pulido, it  was declared null and void  by the  Court of First  Instance of the Province  of Cagayan.

That  the accused were the  authors of the said crime  is fully established by the above facts as proved by the prosecution,  taken in connection with the testimony of the other witnesses for the prosecution, among whom were Eustaquio Academia and Paulo Galicia,  who testified  that between 10 and  11  o'clock of  the night in question, being together at the house of  Cosme Marzan, vice-president-elect,  for the purpose of congratulating him, they on  their way home saw in  the street in  front of the municipal building the defendants, Salustiano Pulido, Lazaro Pulido, and Antonio Pulido,  the first carrying some papers and the other two a  ballot box each,  walking in a direction opposite to that in which the two witnesses were going.   That  the said witnesses recognized  the defendants by the light which came from  the  municipal building and  because the  night was light.   That when they asked the defendants why they were carrying ballot boxes, they did not answer.

There appears no reason why the conclusion of the court below should be disturbed.

The judgment of the court below is, therefore, affirmed, with costs against the appellants.

Arellano, C.  J.,  Torres, Mapa,  Johnson, Carson, and Elliott, JJ., concur.