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Overt acts - attempt begins when act can be reasonably interpreted to bring about
result of felony (if allowed to continue its normal course, it wouldve produced the
result), ie .45 caliber gun pointed at victim
Spontaneous desistance - even if intent clearly discernible, but voluntarily
desisted, perpetuator is relieved of criminal liability for that act
US vs. Eduave
2. Impossible crimes
Satisfies the first three elements of criminal liability (physical element, mental
element, concurrence)
Requirements:
- Act would have been an offense against persons or property
1. Multiple crimes
- multiple sets of criminal liability.
- successive execution by the same individual of several different criminal
acts
- two or more grave or less grave felonies are results of several different
acts
- material (or real) plurality of crimes: different criminal intents result
in two or more crimes, for each of which the accused incurs
criminal liability.
- person committing multiple crimes is punished with ONE penalty in the
following cases:
1. When the offender commits any of the complex crimes defined in Art.
48 of the Code.
2. When the law specifically fixes a single penalty for two or more
offenses committed.
2. Complex crimes
- It requires the commission of at least two crimes but must result from A)
a single act, or B) the offense must be necessary for committing the
other.
- A complex crime is only ONE CRIME. The offender has only one
criminal intent. Even in the case where an offense is a necessary means
for committing the other, the evil intent of the offender is only one.
Hence, there is only one penalty imposed.
- When a single act constitutes two or more grave or less grave felonies,
or when an offense is a necessary means for committing the other, the
penalty for the most serious crime shall be imposed, the same to be
applied in its maximum period.
(1) Compound
- When a single act constitutes two or more grave or less grave felonies
- Requisites
1) Only a single act is performed by the offender
2) That the single act produces (a) two or more grave felonies, or (b)
one or more grave and one or more less grave felonies, or (c) two or
more less grave felonies.
- includes negligence
(2) Complex crime proper
- When an offense is necessary means for committing the other.
- When the offender executes various acts, he must have a single
purpose. But when there are several acts performed, the assumption is
each act is impelled by a distinct criminal impulse, hence each will have
a separate penalty.
- Requisites
1) that at least two offenses are committed
2) that one or some of the offenses must be necessary to commit the
other
3) that both or all the offenses must be punished under the same
statute.
- Light felonies produced by the same act should be treated and punished
as separate offenses or may be absorbed by the grave felony.
B. Transitory Crime
- Moving crime
- the criminal action may be instituted and tried in the court of the
municipality, city or province wherein any of the essential ingredients thereof took
place.
- The singleness of the crime, committed by executing two or more acts, is
not considered.
III. Circumstances affecting criminal liability
There is no civil liability, except in par. 4 of Art. 11, where the civil liability is borne
by the persons benefited by the act.
- Act justified, said to be in accordance with law (no crime), so that the person is
deemed not to have transgressed the law and is free from both criminal and civil
liability, except under avoidance of greater evil, by doing damage where act per se
is unlawful, incurs civil liability
- In self-defense, the burden of proof rests upon the accused. His duty is to establish
self-defense by clear and convincing evidence, otherwise, conviction would follow
from his admission that he killed the victim. He must rely on the strength of his own
evidence and not on the weakness of that for the prosecution
- It would be quite impossible for the State in all cases to prevent aggression upon
its citizens (and even foreigners, of course) and offer protection to the person
unjustly attacked. On the other hand, it cannot be conceived that a person should
succumb to an unlawful aggression without offering any resistance. (Guevara)
The law on self-defense embodied in any penal system in the civilized world finds
justification in man's natural instinct to protect, repel, and save his person or rights
from impending danger or peril; it is based on that impulse of self-preservation born
to man and part of his nature as a human being. To the Classicists in penal law,
lawful defense is grounded on the impossibility on the part of the State to avoid a
present unjust aggression and protect a person unlawfully attacked, and therefore
it is inconceivable for the State to require that the innocent succumb to an unlawful
aggression without resistance, while to the Positivists, lawful defense is an
exercise of a right, an act of social justice done to repel the attack of an aggression.
1. Defense of self, relatives, strangers
- Anyone who acts in defense of his person or rights, provided that the
following circumstances concur
A. Unlawful aggression
Requisites
(a) there must be a physical or material attack or assault;
(b) the attack or assault must be actual, or, at least, imminent; and
(c) the attack or assault must be unlawful.
Kinds
(a) actual or material unlawful aggression; and
(b) imminent unlawful aggression
- Anyone who acts in defense of the person or rights of his spouse, ascendants,
descendants, or legitimate, natural or adopted brothers or sisters, or his relatives
by affinity in the same degrees and those consanguinity within the fourth civil
degree, provided that the first and second requisites prescribed in the next
preceding circumstance are present, and the further requisite, in case the
revocation was given by the person attacked, that the one making defense had no
part therein.
- Anyone who acts in defense of the person or rights of a stranger, provided that the
first and second requisites mentioned in the first circumstance of this article are
present and that the person defending be not induced by revenge, resentment, or
other evil motive