Criminal Law – branch of division of law w/c defines crimes, treats of their nature & provides for their

punishment

Crime – an act committed or omitted in violation of a public law forbidding or commanding it

Bill of Attainder – a legislative act which inflicts punishment without trial

Characteristics of Criminal Law:

1. GENERAL – Criminal law is binding on all persons who live and sojourn in Philippine territory.
Except as provided in treaties & laws of preferential application
2. TERRITORIAL – Criminal laws undertake to punish crimes committed within Philippine territory.
Exceptions: Art. 2
3. PROSPECTIVE – Penal law cannot make an act punishable in a manner in which it was not
punishable when committed. Except whenever a new statute dealing with crime establishes
conditions more lenient or favourable to the accused, it can be given retroactive effect.

Exceptions to the exception:

1. When new law is expressly made inapplicable to pending actions or existing causes
of action
2. Habitual delinquent

Felonies – acts and omissions punishable by the RPC

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. There must be actual physical force or actual use of weapon.

Exempting Circumstances – are those grounds for exemption from punishment because there is wanting
in the agent of the crime any of the conditions which make the act voluntary or negligent

Discernment – the capacity of the child ta the time of the commission of the offense to understand the
differences between right and wrong and the consequences of the wrongful act done.

Accident – something that happens outside the sway of our will, and although it comes about through
some act of our will, lies beyond the bounds of humanly foreseeable consequences

Absolutory Causes – those where the act committed is a crime but for some reasons of public policy and
sentiment there is no penalty imposed.

Mitigating Circumstances – those which, if present in the commission of the crime, do not entirely free
the actor from criminal liability, but serve only to reduce the penalty.

Diversion – refers to an alternative, child appropriate process of determining the responsibility and
treatment of a child in conflict with the law on the basis of his/her social, cultural, economic,
psychological, or educational background without resulting to formal court proceedings.

Diversion Program – refers to the program that the child in conflict with law is required to undergo after
he/she is found responsible for an offense without resorting to formal court proceedings.
Provocation – any unjust or improper conduct or act of the offended party, capable of exciting, inciting
or irritating anyone.

Sufficient (provocation) – adequate to excite a person to commit the wrong and must accordingly be
proportionate gravity.