[CRIM 1] Module 5: Justifying Circumstances and Absolutory Causes

Classical Theory of Criminal Law

Theories in Criminal Law

• Focuses on the offense and the objective result of the act, with scant regard for the human element.

• Criminal liability rests on human free will, intelligence and choice.

Classical Theory of Criminal Law

The Revised Penal Code is predominantly based on the ____________.

Positivist Theory

Theories in Criminal Law

• Primary emphasis is based on the offender—specifically their personal, psychological, physical and social background—rather than purely on the abstract offense.

• Purpose of penalty: reformation, treatment, correction.

Justifying circumstances

• those where the act of a person is said to be in accordance with law, so that such person is deemed not to have transgressed the law and is free from both criminal and civil liability.

• Basis: The law recognizes the non-existence of a crime by expressly stating in the opening sentence of Article 11 that the persons therein mentioned “do not incur any criminal liability.”

Unlawful aggression

• equivalent to assault or at least threatened assault of an immediate and imminent kind.

• there is unlawful aggression when the peril to one’s life, limb or right, is either actual or imminent.

Consanguinity

• blood relationship

• legal & biological relationship between people descended from the same common ancestor

Affinity

• legal relationship created between a person and the blood relatives of their spouse through marriage

  • i.e. parents-in-law or brothers/sisters-in-law

Imputability

• quality by which an act can be attributed/ascribed to a person as its true author or owner

• implies the act was freely and consciously performed by the individual

freedom, intelligence, intent/negligence

• For an act to be imputable to an offender, it must be voluntary, meaning the doer acted with: _______, _______, and ______.

Responsibility

• legal obligation of suffering or taking the penal/civil consequences of a crime

Reclusion perpetua

• a legal prison sentence under the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines that lasts from 20 years and 1 day up to 40 years.

Res judicata

• a legal doctrine that means “a matter adjudged”, which prevents parties from relitigating a case/issue that has already been decided with finality by a competent court.

Arresto mayor

• a legal prison sentence under the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines that lasts 1 month and 1 day up to 6 months.

Abeyance

• a temporary halt, pause or suspension of an activity

Reclusion temporal

• a legal prison sentence under the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines that lasts 12 years and 1 day to 20 years.

indemnify

• to promise to pay for an aggrieved’s future losses, damages, or legal costs if something goes wrong.