Chapter 2
Justifying Circumstances and Circumstances which Exempt from Criminal
Liability
I. Justifying Circumstances – Article 11
II. Exempting Circumstances – Article 12 and other absolutory causes,
Article 20; 124, last part.; 280 last part.; 332; 334; etc
III. Mitigating Circumstances – Article 13
IV. Aggravating Circumstances – Article 14
V. Alternative Circumstances – Article 15
Definition of terms:
1. Imputability
- is the quality which an act may be described to a person as its
author or owner.
- The act committed has been freely and consciously done and
may, therefore, be put down to the doer as his very own.
2. Responsibility
- Is the obligation of suffering the consequences of crimes.
- Obligation of taking the penal and civil consequences of the
crimes.
Imputability Responsibility
implies that a deed may be imputed implies that the person must take
to a person the consequences of such a deed.
3. Guilt
- is an element of responsibility
- a man cannot be made to answer for the consequences of a
crime unless he is guilty.
4. Justifying circumstances
- are those where the act of a person is said to be in
accordance with the law, so that person is deemed not to
have transgressed the law and is free from both criminal and
civil liability.
- Exemption: Paragraph 4 of Article 11, the civil liability is borne
by the persons benefited by the act.
- Basis of justifying circumstances: the person does not incur
any criminal liability
I. Justifying Circumstances – Article 11
Justifying circumstances. – The following do not incur any criminal
liability:
1. Anyone who acts in defense of his person or rights, provided
that the following circumstances concur;
First. Unlawful aggression.
Second. Reasonable necessity of the means employed to
prevent or repel it.
Third. Lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person
defending himself.
2. Anyone who acts in defense of the person or rights of his
spouse, ascendants, descendants, or legitimate, natural, or
adopted brothers or sisters, or of his relatives by affinity in the
same degrees, and those by 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 provocation was given by
the person attacked, that the one making defense had no part
therein.
3. 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 motives.
4. Any person who, in order to avoid an evil or injury, does an act
which causes damage to another, provided that the following
requisites are present:
First. That the evil sought to be avoided actually exists.
Second. That the injury feared be greater than that done to
avoid it.
Third. That there be no other practical and less harmful means
of preventing it.
5. Any person who acts in the fulfillment of a duty or in the lawful
exercise of a right or office.
6. Any person who acts in obedience to an order issued by a
superior for some lawful purpose.
Note:
1. Article 11 recognizes the acts of such persons as justified; such
persons are not criminal, as there is no crime committed.
2. Burden of proof. An accused who pleads a justifying circumstance
admits to the commission of acts but asserts that he is justified in
committing the acts.
I.1. Paragraph 1
Classicist view:
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
Positivist view:
Lawful defense is an exercise of a right, an act of social justice done to
repel the attack of an aggressor.
Requisites of self-defense:
1. Unlawful aggression
2. Reasonable necessity of the means employed to prevent or repel it
3. Lack of sufficient provocation on the part of the person defending
himself.
I.1 Unlawful aggression
- An indispensable requisite
o The presence of unlawful aggression is a condition sine
qua non (without which not)
o There can be no self-defense, complete or incomplete,
unless the victim has committed an unlawful aggression
against the person defending himself.
Kinds of unlawful aggressions:
1. Assault or at least threatened assault of an immediate and
imminent kind.
2. When the peril to one’s life, limb, or right is either actual or
imminent.
3. There must be actual physical force or actual use of a
weapon.
4. There must be an actual physical assault upon a person, or at
least a threat to inflict real injury
5. It presupposes an actual, sudden, and unexpected attack, or
imminent danger thereof, and not merely a threatening or
intimidating attitude.
a. It cannot consist of oral threats or a merely threatening
stance or posture.
6. The threat must be offensive and positively strong, showing
the wrongful intent to cause an injury
7. There must be a real danger to life or personal safety.
a. When there is no peril to one’s life, limb or right, there is
no unlawful aggression.
b.
8.