People vs Pabalan : 115350 : September 30, 1996 : J Regalado : Secon... 8 of 10 http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/1996/sept1996/115350.htm [38] sufficient to prove beyond reasonable doubt the guilt of the accused. There is no law which requires that the testimony of a single witness has to be corroborated, except where expressly mandated in determining the value and credibility of evidence. Witnesses are to be weighed, not [39] numbered. A final observation and reminder on the penalties imposed by the lower court. When the offense of illegal recruitment constitutes economic sabotage, as in the present case of illegal recruitment in large scale, the penalty provided by law is life imprisonment and a [40] fine of one hundred thousand pesos (P100,000.00). Reclusion perpetua was never prescribed by the law as the punishment for such crime. This Court has repeatedly emphasized the differences between the penalty of reclusion perpetua and life imprisonment in numerous decisions and administrative circulars. We do not wish to again belabor such distinctions in this decision, but we do expect all judges to take note of the difference and impose the proper penalty with the correct nomenclature. On the imposable penalty for the particular felony of estafa in the present cases, we are constrained to discuss the pertinent provision of Article 315 of the Revised Penal Code. Under the said article, an accused found guilty of estafa shall suffer: 1st. The penalty of prision correccional in its maximum period to prision mayor in its minimum period, if the amount of the fraud is over 12,000 but does not exceed 22,000 pesos, and if such amount exceeds the latter sum, the penalty provided in this paragraph shall be imposed in its maximum period, adding one year for each additional 10,000 pesos, but the total penalty which may be imposed shall not exceed twenty years. In such case and in connection with the accessory penalties which may be imposed and for the purpose of the other provisions of this Code, the penalty shall be termed prision mayor or reclusion [41] temporal, as the case may be. [42] The amount of the fraud in Criminal Case No. 3090-V-93 is P88,500.00; Criminal Case No. 3091-V-93, P66,000.00; and in Criminal Case No. 3092-V-93, P94,400.00. Subtracting P22,000.00 from each of the aforesaid amounts will leave P66,500.00 P44,000.00 and P72,400.00 in the respective criminal cases. To determine the additional years of imprisonment prescribed in the above article, each of the latter amounts shall be divided by P10,000.00, disregarding any amount below P10,000.00. Thus, in the foregoing estafa cases, the incremental penalties of six (6) years, four (4) years and seven (7) years should be correspondingly added to the maximum period of the basic penalty provided in the aforequoted paragraph of Article 315. Applying the mandate of the Indeterminate Sentence Law, the maximum penalty shall therefore be taken from the maximum period of said basic penalty in Article 315 as augmented by the additional years of imprisonment, while the minimum term of the indeterminate sentence shall be within the range of the penalty next lower in degree to that provided by law without considering the incremental penalty for the amounts in excess of P22,000.00. That penalty [43] immediately lower in degree is prision correccional in its minimum and medium periods, with a duration of six (6) months and one (1) day to four (4) years and two (2) months. Based on the foregoing considerations, the lower court incorrectly imposed the penalty of reclusion perpetua in the illegal recruitment case, and likewise erred in fixing the minimum terms of the indeterminate sentences in the estafa cases. WHEREFORE, the judgment of the court a quo finding accused-appellant Restituto Pabalan guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crimes of illegal recruitment in large scale (Criminal Cases No. 3089-V-93) and estafa (Criminal Cases Nos. 3090-V-93, 3091-V-93 and 3092-V-93) is 1/20/2016 1:00 PM