Penalties and their application: the mechanism, not the arithmetic

Of the three blocks of Book One of the Revised Penal Code, the penalty block is the most feared and the most mechanical. Candidates avoid it because it looks like arithmetic; the Bulletin removes the arithmetic — the examinee is not required to compute the specific periods of penalties expressed in years, months or days — and what remains is a set of rules about which penalty applies and how the attending circumstances move it.

That is a reasoning exercise, and it is one of the most reliably markable things in the paper.

What you are being asked

When a criminal law question asks about the penalty, the answer almost never requires a number. It requires four statements:

1. The penalty prescribed for the offence — by name, and its classification (divisible or indivisible).
2. The stage reached — consummated, frustrated, attempted — and the penalty the law prescribes for that stage, which is not the same as the penalty for the consummated offence.
3. The attending circumstances, classified, and the direction in which each moves the penalty.
4. The resulting penalty in its correct period — minimum, medium or maximum — as determined by the rules, without computing days.

So the examinable skill is classification and direction. A candidate who can say "the penalty is next lower in degree, because the mitigating circumstance is ordinary and there is no aggravating circumstance to offset it, and it is imposed in its minimum period" has answered, and has not needed arithmetic once.

The classification of penalties

Learn the taxonomy before the rules:

• Principal penalties — those the law imposes for the offence itself.
• Accessory penalties — those that follow from the principal penalty, and which the law attaches to it.
• Divisible and indivisible penalties — the distinction that makes the three-period analysis possible at all.

An indivisible penalty cannot be graduated; a divisible one can be imposed in its minimum, medium or maximum period. Almost every question about the application of penalties is about a divisible penalty, which is why the taxonomy comes first.

The three periods, and the rules that shift them

For a divisible penalty, the Code divides it into three periods. The rules for choosing among them are built from the circumstances found:

• Aggravating circumstances push toward the maximum; mitigating toward the minimum; and the absence of either, or their offset, produces the medium.
• Ordinary aggravating circumstances must be alleged and proved, and are not presumed.
• Qualifying circumstances do not move the period at all; they change the offence and therefore the penalty prescribed. That distinction is the most commonly confused point in the entire block.
• Inherent circumstances are absorbed by the offence and do not aggravate further.

The rule that makes this an answer rather than a guess: classify each circumstance first, then apply the direction. A candidate who skips the classification and reasons from intuition gets the direction wrong more often than right.

The relationship between circumstances and liability

A parallel classification decides the acquittal questions, and it is worth learning at the same time, because questions mix them:

The justifying/exempting split is the single most examinable distinction in Book One, because both end in acquittal and differ on the civil consequence.

Conspiracy, and how it changes the penalty analysis

Conspiracy is not a penalty rule, but it is examined through one: when conspiracy is established, the act of one is the act of all, and the penalty analysis runs on the act rather than on each person's individual contribution. Without conspiracy, the analysis runs on participation — principal, accomplice, accessory — and the penalty for an accomplice is one degree lower.

Two habits: state whether conspiracy exists (and on what facts), and state the degree relationship explicitly ("one degree lower").

The degrees and the ladder

Questions often require movement along the ladder of penalties: one degree lower, two degrees lower, the penalty next lower in degree. Learn:

• The scale — which penalty sits below which.
• The special rules for the case where the lower penalty is not applicable, or where the offender is entitled to a lower degree by provision of law (for example, where the case falls under the privileged mitigating circumstances).
• The rule for complex crimes and for the continued crime, which change how penalties are imposed.

Again: the mechanism, not the multiplication.

What an answer looks like

A skeleton for "what is the penalty":

The offence is [crime], punished by [penalty] under [provision]. It was [consummated/attempted/frustrated], so [the prescribed penalty for that stage]. Of the circumstances alleged, [X] is [classification] and therefore [effect]; [Y] is a qualifying circumstance and changes the offence to [Z], which carries [penalty]. There being [one mitigating and no aggravating / no circumstances], the penalty is imposed in its [minimum/medium/maximum] period.

That is one paragraph, and it contains four decisions, each of which the examiner can tick.

Practice

1. The classification drill. Take twenty short fact statements and classify the circumstance: justifying, exempting, mitigating, aggravating, alternative — and state the effect in one line. This is the highest-yield twenty minutes in the block.
2. The stage drill. Take ten offences and state the penalty for the consummated, frustrated and attempted versions, naming the provision.
3. The ladder drill. Take ten questions requiring a one-degree reduction and write only the resulting penalty's name.

Note the Bulletin's relief does not extend to the names: you must know which penalty applies. It relieves you of the days.

For the subject's map, see how to study Criminal Law; for the statutes outside the Code, special penal laws on the syllabus.