damages due to the victim's heirs:P25,000.00 as temperate damages and P30,000.00 as exemplary damages in addition to the P50,000.00 as death indemnity and the P50,000.00 as moral damages, plus interest of 6% per annum on such amounts from the finality of the judgment.

When death occurs due to a crime, the damages to be awarded may include: (a) civil indemnity ex delicto for the death of the victim; (b) actual or compensatory damages; (c) moral damages; (d) exemplary damages; and (e) temperate damages.³⁰

Accordingly, the CA and the RTC should also have granted moral damages in addition to the death indemnity, which were of different kinds.³¹ The death indemnity compensated the loss of life due to crime, but appropriate and reasonable moral damages would justly assuage the mental anguish and emotional sufferings of the surviving family of Olais.³² Although mental anguish and emotional sufferings of the surviving family were not quantifiable with mathematical precision, the Court must nonetheless strive to set an amount that would restore the heirs of the deceased to their moral status quo ante. Given the circumstances, P50,000.00 should be reasonable as moral damages, which, pursuant to prevailing jurisprudence,³³ we are bound to award despite the absence of any allegation and proof of the heirs’ mental anguish and emotional suffering. The rationale for doing so rested on human nature and experience having shown that:

xxx a violent death invariably and necessarily brings about emotional pain and anguish on the part of the victim’s family. It is inherently human to suffer sorrow, torment, pain and anger when a loved one becomes the victim of a violent or brutal killing. Such violent death or brutal killing not only steals from the family of the deceased his precious life, deprives them forever of his love, affection and support, but often leaves them with the gnawing feeling that an injustice has been done to them.³⁴1âwphi1

Another omission of the CA and the RTC was their non-recognition of the right of the heirs of the victim to temperate damages. The victim’s wife testified about her family’s incurring funeral expenses of P36,000.00, but only P18,000.00 was backed by receipts. It is already settled that when actual damages substantiated by receipts sum up to lower than P25,000.00, temperate damages of at least P25,000.00 become justified, in lieu of actual damages in the lesser amount actually proved by receipts. It would obviously be unfair to the heirs of the victim to deny them compensation by way of actual damages despite their honest attempt to prove their actual expenses by receipts (but succeeding only in showing expenses lower than P25,000.00 in amount).³⁵ Indeed, the heirs should not be left in a worse situation than the heirs of another victim who might be nonetheless allowed temperate damages of P25,000.00 despite not having presented any receipts at all. With the victim’s wife having proved P18,000.00 worth of expenses, granting his heirs temperate damages of P25,000.00, not only P18,000.00, is just and proper. Not to do so would foster a travesty of basic fairness.

The Civil Code provides that exemplary damages may be imposed in criminal cases as part of the civil liability "when the crime was committed with one or more aggravating circumstances."³⁶ The Civil Code permits such damages to be awarded "by way of example or correction for the public good, in addition to the moral, temperate, liquidated or compensatory damages."³⁷ In light of such legal provisions, the CA and the RTC should have recognized the entitlement of the heirs of the victim to exemplary damages on account of the attendance of treachery. It was of no moment that treachery was an attendant circumstance in murder, and, as such, inseparable and absorbed in murder. As well explained in People v. Catubig:³⁸

The term "aggravating circumstances" used by the Civil Code, the law not having specified otherwise, is to be understood in its broad or generic sense. The commission of an offense has a two-pronged effect, one on the public as it breaches the social order and the other upon the private victim as it causes personal sufferings, each of which is addressed by, respectively, the prescription of heavier punishment for the accused and by an award of additional damages to the victim. The increase of the penalty or a shift to a graver felony underscores the exacerbation of the offense by the attendance of aggravating circumstances, whether ordinary or qualifying, in its commission. Unlike the criminal liability which is basically a State concern, the award of damages, however, is likewise, if not primarily, intended for the offended party who suffers thereby. It would make little sense for an award of exemplary damages to be due the private offended party when the aggravating circumstance is ordinary but to be withheld when it is qualifying. Withal, the ordinary or qualifying nature of an aggravating circumstance is a distinction that should only be of consequence to the criminal, rather than to the civil, liability of the offender. In fine, relative to the civil aspect of the case, an aggravating circumstance, whether ordinary or qualifying, should entitle the offended party to an award of exemplary damages within the unbridled meaning of Article 2230 of the Civil Code.
x x x

 WHEREFORE, we AFFIRM the decision promulgated on June 29, 2006 by the Court of Appeals, subject to the MODIFICATION of the civil damages, by ordering accused Alfonso Fontanilla y Obaldo to pay to the heirs of Jose Olais P25,000.00 as temperate damages and P30,000.00 as exemplary damages in addition to the P50,000.00 as death indemnity and the P50,000.00 as moral damages, plus interest of 6% per annum on such amounts from the finality of the judgment.