1. When accessories are not criminally liable:
1. When the felony committed is a light felony 2. When the accessory is related to the principal as
i. spouse
ii. ascendant, or descendant, or
iii. brother or sister whether legitimate, or natural or adopted or
iv. where the accessory is a relative by affinity within the same degree,
unless the accessory himself profited from the effects or proceeds of the crime or assisted the offender to profit therefrom.
2. When one cannot be an accessory:
he does not know the commission of the crime
he participated in the crime as a principal or an accomplice
3. When an accessory is exempt from criminal liability:
(ASKED 4 TIMES IN THE BAR EXAMS) When the principal is his:
spouse,
ascendant
descendant
legitimate, natural or adopted brother, sister or relative by affinity within the same degree.
Note: Even if only two of the principals guilty of murder are the brothers of the accessory and the others are not related to him, such accessory is exempt from criminal liability.
4. When an accessory is NOT exempt from criminal liability even if the principal is related to him:
If such accessory
o profited from the effects of the crime, or o assisted the offender to profit by the
effects of the crime
5. Other instances when one becomes an accessory:
1. accessory as a fence
2. acquiring the effects of piracy or brigandage 3. destroying the corpus delicti
4. harboring or concealing an offender
5. whether the accomplice and the accessory may be tried and convicted even before the principal is found guilty
1. Accessory as a fence:
Presidential Decree No. 1612 (Anti-Fencing Law) One who knowingly profits or assists the principal to profit by the effects of robbery or theft (i.e. a fence) is not just an accessory to the crime, but principally liable for fencing
The penalty is higher than that of a mere accessory to the crime of robbery or theft.
Mere possession of any article of value which has been the subject of robbery or theft brings about the presumption of ―fencing‖.
PD 1612 has, therefore, modified Art. 19 of the RPC.
2. Acquiring the effects of piracy or brigandage:
Presidential Decree 532 (Anti-piracy and Highway Robbery law of 1974)
If the crime was piracy or brigandage under PD 532, said act constitutes the crime of abetting piracy or abetting brigandage as the case may be, although the penalty is that of an accomplice, not just an accessory, to the piracy or the brigandage.
Section 4 of PD 532 provides that any person who knowingly and in any manner acquires or receives property taken by such pirates or brigands or in any manner derives benefit therefrom, shall be considered as an accomplice of the principal offenders in accordance with the Rules prescribed by the Revised Penal Code.
It shall be presumed that any person who does any acts provided in this section has performed them knowingly, unless the contrary is proven.
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Although Republic Act 7659, in amending Article 122 of the RPC, incorporated therein the crime of piracy in Philippine territorial waters and thus correspondingly superseding PD 532 section 4 of said Decree, which punishes said acts as a crime of abetting piracy or brigandage, still stands as it has not been replaced or modified, and is not inconsistent with any provision of RA 7659.
3. Destroying the Corpus Delicti
When the crime is robbery or theft, with respect to the third involvement of the accessory, do not overlook the purpose which must be to prevent discovery of the crime.
The corpus delicti is not the body of the person who is killed.
Even if the corpse is not recovered, as long as that killing is established beyond reasonable doubt, criminal liability will arise.
If there is someone who destroys the corpus delicti to prevent discovery, he becomes an accessory.
4. Harboring or Concealing an Offender
In the fourth form or manner of becoming an accessory, take note that the law distinguishes between:
a public officer harboring, concealing or assisting the principal to escape, and
a private citizen or civilian harboring, concealing or assisting the principal to escape.
Public Officer Civilian The nature of the crime
is immaterial
The nature of the crime is material
What is material is that he used his public
a. Crime committed is kidnapping for ransom of his employer. Principal was being chased by police.
b. His aunt hid him in the ceiling of her house and she told the soldiers that her nephew had never visited her. When the soldiers left, the aunt even gave money to her nephew for the latter to go to the province.
c. Is the aunt criminally liable? No. Article 20 does not include an aunt. However, this is not the reason.
d. The principal must have committed either treason, parricide, murder, or attempt on the life of the Chief Executive, or that the principal is known to be habitually guilty of some other because the crime is kidnapping, but she can be held liable under PD 1829.
Revised Penal Code
PD 1829 (Also Known as the Law Penalizing
―Obstruction of Justice‖)
Specifies the crimes that should be even be the principal or need not be convicted accessory and accomplice must be charged together with the principal; if the latter is acquitted, the accomplice and the accessory shall not be criminally liable, unless the acquittal is based on a defense which is personal only to the principal.
However, it is not always true that the accomplice and the accessory cannot be criminally liable without the principal being first convicted.
Under Rule 110 of the Revised Rules on Criminal Procedure, it is required that all those involved in the commission of the crime must be included in the information that may be filed.
The liability of the accused will depend on the quantum of evidence adduced by the prosecution against the particular accused but the prosecution must initiate the proceedings against the principal.
Even if the principal is convicted, if the evidence presented against a supposed accomplice or accessory does not meet the required proof beyond
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But if the evidence shows that the act done does not constitute a crime and the principal is acquitted, then the supposed accomplice and accessory should also be acquitted.
If there is no crime, then there is no criminal liability, whether principal, accomplice or accessory.
Taer v. CA (1990):
Accused received from his co-accused two stolen male carabaos. Conspiracy was not proven. Taer was held liable as an accessory in the crime of cattle-rustling under PD 533. Taer should have been liable as principal for violation of the Anti-Fencing Law since cattle-rustling is a form of theft or robbery of large cattle, except that he was not charged with fencing.
Enrile v. Amin (1990): A person charged with rebellion should not be separately charged under PD 1829. The theory of absorption must not confine itself to common crimes but also to offenses punished under special laws which are perpetrated in furtherance of the political offense.
Decree Penalizing Obstruction of Apprehension and Prosecution of Criminal Offenders (P.D. 1829)
What is imposed:
Prision correccional in its maximum period, or
Fine ranging from PhP 1,000 – 6,000, or
Both
Upon any person who knowingly or willfully obstructs, impedes, frustrates or delays the apprehension of suspects and the investigation and prosecution of criminal cases through the acts enumerated in Sec. 1
i. Punishable acts (Sec. 1)
a) Preventing witnesses from testifying in any criminal proceeding or from reporting the commission of any offense or the identity of any offender/s by means of bribery, misrepresentation, deceit, intimidation, force or threats;
b) Altering, destroying, suppressing or concealing any paper, record, document, or object with intent to impair its veracity, authenticity, legibility, availability, or admissibility as evidence in any investigation of or official proceedings in criminal cases, or to be used in the investigation of, or official proceedings in, criminal cases;
c) Harboring or concealing, or facilitating the escape of, any persons he knows, or has reasonable ground to believe or suspect, has committed any offense under existing penal laws in order to prevent his arrest, prosecution and conviction;
d) Publicly using a fictitious name for the purpose of concealing a crime, evading prosecution or the execution of a judgment, or concealing his
true name and other personal circumstances for the same purpose or purposes;
e) Delaying the prosecution of criminal cases by obstructing the service of process or court orders or disturbing proceedings in the fiscals‘
offices, in Tanodbayan, or in the courts;
f) Making, presenting or using any record, document, paper or object with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to affect the course or outcome of the investigation of, or official proceedings in criminal cases;
g) Soliciting, accepting, or agreeing to accept any benefit in consideration of abstaining from, discontinuing, or impeding the prosecution of a criminal offender;
h) Threatening directly or indirectly another with the infliction of any wrong upon his person, honor or property or that of any immediate member or members of his family in order to prevent such person from appearing in the investigation of, or official proceedings in, criminal cases, or imposing a condition, whether lawful or unlawful, in order to prevent a person from appearing in the investigation of, or in official proceedings in criminal cases;
i) Giving a false or fabricated information to mislead or prevent the law enforcement agencies from apprehending the offender or from protecting the life or property of the victim; or fabricating information from the data gathered in confidence by investigating authorities for purposes of background information and not for publication and publishing or disseminating the same to mislead the investigator or the court.
ii. Compare with Article 20, RPC (accessories exempt from criminal liability)
Art. 20. Accessories who are exempt from criminal liability – The penalties prescribed for accessories shall not be imposed upon those who are such with respect to their spouses, ascendants, descendants, legitimate, natural, and adopted brothers and sisters, or relatives by affinity within the same degrees, with the single exception of accessories falling within the provisions of paragraph 1 of the next preceding article.
Ground for exemption under Art. 20
Based on ties of blood and the preservation of the cleanliness of one‘s name, which compels one to conceal crimes committed by relatives so near as those mentioned.
Accessory is not exempt from criminal liability even if the principal is related to him if he
a) profited by the effects of the crime, or
b) assisted the offender to profit by the effect of the crime.
The punishable acts in PD 1829, compared to RPC Art. 20, are prompted by a detestable greed, not by affection.
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83 CHAPTER V. PENALTIES
A. GENERAL PRINCIPLES
B. PENALTIES WHICH MAY BE IMPOSED
C. SPECIFIC PRINCIPAL AND ACCESSORY PENALTIES
D. ACCESSORY PENALTIES
E. MEASURES NOT CONSIDERED PENALTY F. APPLICATION AND COMPUTATION OF
PENALTIES
G. SPECIAL RULES FOR CERTAIN SITUATIONS H. EXECUTION AND SERVICE OF PENALTIES.
PENALTY is the suffering that is inflicted by the State for the transgression of a law.
Different Juridical Conditions of Penalty:
1. Must be PRODUCTIVE OF SUFFERING, without affecting the integrity of the human personality.
2. Must be COMMENSURATE to the offense – different crimes must be punished with different penalties.
3. Must be PERSONAL – no one should be punished for the crime of another.
4. Must be LEGAL – it is the consequence of a judgment according to law.
5. Must be CERTAIN – no one may escape its effects.
6. Must be EQUAL for all.
7. Must be CORRECTIONAL.
Theories justifying penalty:
1. PREVENTION – to suppress danger to the State 2. SELF-DEFENSE – to protect the society from the
threat and wrong inflicted by the criminal.
3. REFORMATION – to correct and reform the offender.
4. EXEMPLARITY – to serve as an example to deter others from committing crimes.
5. JUSTICE – for retributive justice, a vindication of absolute right and moral law violated by the criminal.
A. General Principles
Art. 21. Penalties that may be imposed. — No felony shall be punishable by any penalty not prescribed by law prior to its commission.
This article prohibits the Government from punishing any person for any felony with any penalty which has not been prescribed by the law.
It has no application to any of the provisions of the RPC for the reason that for every felony defined in the Code, a penalty has been prescribed.
REASON: An act or omission cannot be punished by the State if at the time it was committed there was no law prohibiting it, because a law cannot be rationally obeyed unless it is first shown, and a man cannot be expected to obey an order that has not been given.
Act Prohibiting the Imposition of Death Penalty in the Philippines (R.A. 9346)
RA 9346 or ―An Act Prohibiting the Imposition of Death Penalty in the Philippines‖
Expressly repealed RA 8177 or ―Act Designating Death by Lethal Injection‖ and RA 7659 or ―Death Penalty Law‖
RA 9346 repealed all the other laws imposing death penalty.
Section 2 states that: ―In lieu of the death penalty, the following shall be imposed:
a. the penalty of reclusion perpetua, when the law violated makes use of the nomenclature of the penalties of the Revised Penal Code;
or
b. the penalty of life imprisonment, when the law violated does not make use of the nomenclature of the penalties of the Revised Penal Code.‖
People v. Bon (2006): Yet in truth, there is no material difference between ―imposition‖ and
―application,‖ for both terms embody the operation in law of the death penalty.
Since Article 71 denominates ―death‖ as an element in the graduated scale of penalties, there is no question that the operation of Article 71 involves the actual application of the death penalty as a means of determining the extent which a person‘s liberty is to be deprived.
Since Rep. Act No. 9346 unequivocally bars the application of the death penalty, as well as expressly repeals all such statutory provisions requiring the application of the death penalty, such effect necessarily extends to its relevance to the graduated scale of penalties under Article 71.
The court cannot find basis to conclude that Rep.
Act No. 9346 intended to retain the operative effects of the death penalty in the graduation of the other penalties in our penal laws.
Munoz cannot enjoin us to adopt such conclusion.
Rep. Act No. 9346 is not swaddled in the same restraints appreciated by Muñoz on Section 19(1), Article III.
The very Congress empowered by the Constitution to reinstate the imposition of the death penalty once thought it best to do so, through Rep. Act No. 7650.
Within the same realm of constitutional discretion, Congress has reversed itself.
It must be asserted that today, the legal status of the suppression of the death penalty in the Philippines has never been more secure than at any time in our political history as a nation.
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84 1. Purposes
Purpose of penalty under the RPC:
1. RETRIBUTION OR EXPIATION – the penalty is commensurate with the gravity of the offense.
It permits society to exact proportionate revenge, and the offender to atone for his wrongs.
2. CORRECTION OR REFORMATION – as shown by the rules which regulate the execution of the penalties consisting in deprivation of liberty.
3. SOCIAL DEFENSE – shown by its inflexible severity to recidivist and habitual delinquents.
2. Classification
1. Major Classification
(Asked 3 times in the Bar Exams)
a. PRINCIPAL PENALTIES – those expressly imposed by the court in the judgment of conviction.
b. ACCESSORY PENALTIES – those that are deemed included in the imposition of the principal penalties.
c. SUBSIDIARY PENALTIES – those imposed in lieu of principal penalties, i.e., imprisonment in case of inability to pay the fine.
Note: Public censure is a penalty,
Thus, it is not proper in acquittal.
However, the Court in acquitting the accused may criticize his acts or conduct.
Penalties that are either principal or accessory:
Perpetual or temporary absolute disqualification,
Perpetual or temporary special disqualification, and
Suspension
o May be principal or accessory penalties, because they are formed in the 2 general classes. (Asked 3 times in the Bar Exams)
2. Other Classifications of Penalties
a. According to their divisibility:
(1) Divisible
(a) those that have fixed duration (b) divisible into three periods.
(2) Indivisible
(a) those which have no fixed duration:
(b) Death
(c) Reclusion perpetua
(d) Perpetual absolute or special disqualification
(e) Public censure b. According to subject-matter
(1) Corporal (death)
(2) Deprivation of freedom (reclusion, prision, arresto)
(3) Restriction of freedom (destierro)
(4) Deprivation of rights (disqualification and suspension)
(5) Pecuniary (fine)
c. According to their gravity (1) Capital
(2) Afflictive (3) Correctional (4) Light
3. Duration and Effect
Art. 22. Retroactive effect of penal laws. — Penal Laws shall have a retroactive effect insofar as they favor the persons guilty of a felony, who is not a habitual criminal, as this term is defined in Rule 5 of Article 62 of this Code, although at the time of the publication of such laws a final sentence has been pronounced and the convict is serving the same.
This article states that Penal Laws shall only have retroactive effect if it favors persons guilty of felonies, who are not considered habitual criminals as defined in Article 62.
Art. 23. Effect of pardon by the offended party.
— A pardon of the offended party does not extinguish criminal action except as provided in Article 344 of this Code; but civil liability with regard to the interest of the injured party is extinguished by his express waiver.
This article states the extent of a pardon made by the offended party. Under this article, a pardon does not extinguish the criminal liability of an offender except for cases under Article 344 (Prosecution of the crimes of adultery, concubinage, seduction, abduction, rape and acts of lasciviousness).
But the civil liability with regard to the interest of the injured party is extinguished.
Art. 25. Penalties which may be imposed.
The penalties which may be imposed according to this Code, and their different classes, are those included in the following:
B. Penalties which may be imposed
1. Scale of Principal Penalties
a. Capital punishment: (D) (1) Death.
b. Afflictive penalties: (RP, RT, PAD, TAD, PSD, TSD, PM)
(1) Reclusion perpetua, (2) Reclusion temporal,
(3) Perpetual or temporary absolute disqualification,
(4) Perpetual or temporary special disqualification,
(5) Prision mayor.
c. Correctional penalties: (PC, AM, S, Des) (1) Prision correccional,
(2) Arresto mayor, (3) Suspension,
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(4) Destierro.
d. Light penalties: (Am, Pc) (1) Arresto menor,
(2) Public censure.
e. Penalties common to the three preceding classes: (F, Bond)
(1) Fine, and
(2) Bond to keep the peace.
2. Scale of Accessory Penalties
(PAD, TAD, PSD, TSD, S, CI, I, F, Pay)
a. Perpetual or temporary absolute disqualification,
b. Perpetual or temporary special disqualification, c. Suspension from public office, the right to vote
and be voted for, the profession or calling.
d. Civil interdiction, e. Indemnification,
f. Forfeiture or confiscation of instruments and proceeds of the offense,
g. Payment of costs
LIFE IMPRISONMENT RECLUSION PERPETUA Imposed for serious
offenses penalized by special laws
Prescribed under the RPC
Does not carry with it accessory penalties
Carries with it accessory penalties
Does not appear to have any definite extent or duration
Entails imprisonment for at least 30 years after which the convict becomes eligible for pardon although the maximum period shall in no case exceed 40 years The following table also contains DISQUALIFICATION as an afflictive penalty, because its different forms can also be imposed as a principal although it is
Entails imprisonment for at least 30 years after which the convict becomes eligible for pardon although the maximum period shall in no case exceed 40 years The following table also contains DISQUALIFICATION as an afflictive penalty, because its different forms can also be imposed as a principal although it is