04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly discretion of the courts.[50] Under present case law, the award of P50,000.00 for civil indemnity is mandatory upon the finding of the fact of murder. Moral damages, vis-a-vis compensatory damages or civil indemnity, are different from each other and should thus be awarded separately.[51] Thus, as explained in People v. Victor,[52] the indemnity authorized by our criminal law as civil liability ex delicto for the offended party, in the amount authorized by the prevailing judicial policy and aside from other established actual damages, is itself equivalent to actual or compensatory damages in civil law. It is not to be considered as moral damages thereunder, the latter being based on different jural foundations and assessed by the court in the exercise of sound discretion.[53] In People v. Victor the Court increased the civil indemnity for rape committed or effectively qualified by any of the circumstances under which the death penalty is authorized by the present amended law, from P50,000.00 to P75,000.00. The Court held that "This is not only a reaction to the apathetic societal perception of the penal law and the financial fluctations over time, but also an expression of the displeasure of the Court over the incidence of heinous crimes against chastity."[54] It is submitted that the heirs of victims of murder, which is also a heinous crime, should not receive less than what victims of rape receive as civil indemnity. If the civil indemnity is automatically imposed upon the accused without need of proof other than the fact of the commission of the offense, all the more reason should the same minimum amount be imposed on those convicted of murder, as more often than not the victims who are killed leave behind grieving families who are depended upon them for support. Thus, indemnity of P75,000.00 should therefore be reckoned for each count of murder committed by accused-appellant SPO1 Jose Bangcado. Since the crime was committed on 27 June 1993, the penalty for murder prescribed by Art. 248 of the Revised Penal Code, prior to its amendment by RA 7659, which took effect only on 31 December 1993, should be applied in imposing the penalty for frustrated murder, i.e., reclusion temporal maximum to death. The penalty for frustrated murder is one (1) degree lower than that prescribed by the Penal Code for the consummated offense, hence, the imposable penalty for frustrated murder should be prision mayor maximum to reclusion temporal medium. Applying the Indeterminate Sentence Law, and there being no mitigating nor aggravating circumstance present in the commission of the offense, the penalty to be imposed for the frustrated murder shall be taken from the range of prision correccional maximum to prision mayor medium or four (4) years two (2) months and one (1) day to ten (10) years as minimum, to the medium period of prision mayor maximum to reclusion temporal or twelve (12) years five (5) months and eleven (11) days to fourteen (14) years ten (10) months and twenty (20) days as maximum. Hence, an indeterminate prison term of eight (8) years two (2) months and ten (10) days of prision mayor medium as minimum to fourteen (14) years four (4) months and ten (10) days of reclusion temporal medium as maximum may be considered reasonable for the frustrated murder under the facts of this case. WHEREFORE, the Decision of the court a quo in Crim. Cases Nos. 11619-R to 11622-R imposing reclusion perpetua for the two (2) counts of murder and the indeterminate prison term of prision mayor in its medium period to reclusion elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/37955 12/16