Lawful Insuperable Cause, A12(7) Revised Penal Code
Lawful insuperable cause – refers to the exempting circumstance that exempts an accused from criminal liability for committing an offense resulting from failing to perform an act required by law, when prevented by some lawful insuperable cause.
1. Concept
Lawful insuperable cause – refers to the exempting circumstance that exempts an accused from criminal liability for committing an offense resulting from failing to perform an act required by law, when prevented by some lawful insuperable cause.
a. Legal basis
Article 12. Circumstances which exempt from criminal liability. – the following are exempt from criminal liability:
7. Any person who fails to perform an act required by law, when prevented by some lawful insuperable cause.
(Revised Penal Code)
b. Effects of exempting circumstances
1) Admission by the accused
An exempting circumstance, by its nature, admits that criminal and civil liabilities exist, but the accused is freed from criminal liability; in other words, the accused committed a crime, but he cannot be held criminally liable therefor because of an exemption granted by law. (Sierra v. People, G.R. No. 182941, July 3, 2009, Per Brion, J.)
Strictly speaking, a person acting under any of the exempting circumstances commits a crime but cannot be held criminally liable therefor. The exemption from punishment stems from the complete absence of intelligence or free will in performing the act. (People v. Pantoja, G.R. No. 223114, November 29, 2017, Per Martires, J.)
2) Burden shifts to accused
As with justifying circumstances, exempting circumstances presupposes that the accused admits to the commission of the offense; however, the accused pleads an exempting circumstance to avoid criminal liability. Thus, the accused has the burden of proof on the applicability the exempting circumstance that is being invoked.
Well settled is the rule in criminal cases, that the prosecution has the burden of proof to establish the guilt of the accused. However, once the defendant admits the commission of the offense charged, but raises an exempting circumstance as a defense, the burden of proof is shifted to him. (People v. Concepcion, G.R. No. 136844, August 1, 2002, Per Quisumbing, J.)
2. Lawful insuperable cause
This person is exempt from criminal liability: Person failing to perform an act required by law, when prevented by some lawful insuperable cause. (REVISED PENAL CODE, Article 12[7])
People v. Bandian, En Banc, G.R. No. 45186, September 30, 1936, Per Diaz, J.:
• The evidence certainly does not show that the [the Accused], in causing her child’s death in one way or another, or in abandoning it in the thicket, did so wilfully, consciously or imprudently. She had no cause to kill or abandon it, to expose it to death, because her affair with a former lover, which was not unknown to her second lover, Luis Kirol, took place three years before the incident; her married life with Kirol — she considers him her husband as he considers her his wife — began a year ago; as he so testified at the trial, he knew that the [the Accused] was pregnant and he believed from the beginning, affirming such belief when he testified at the trial, that the child carried by the [the Accused] in her womb was his, and he testified that he and she had been eagerly waiting for the birth of the child. The [the Accused], therefore, had no cause to be ashamed of her pregnancy to Kirol.
• If to the foregoing facts is added the testimony of the witnesses Valentin Aguilar and Adriano Comcom that the child was taken from the thicket and carried already dead to the [the Accused]’s house after the [the Accused] had left the place, staggering, without strength to remain on her feet and very dizzy, to the extent of having to be as in fact she was helped to go up to her house and to lie in bed, it will clearly appear how far from the truth were Dr. Nepomuceno’s affirmation and conclusions. Also add to all these the fact that the [the Accused] denied having made any admission to said physician and that from the time she became pregnant she continuously had fever. This illness and her extreme debility undoubtedly caused by her long illness as well as the hemorrhage which she had upon giving birth, coupled with the circumstances that she is a primipara, being then only 23 years of age, and therefore inexperienced as to childbirth and as to the inconvenience or difficulties usually attending such event; and the fact that she, like her lover Luis Kirol — a mere laborer earning only twenty-five centavos a day — is uneducated and could supplant with what she had read or learned from books what experience itself could teach her, undoubtedly were the reasons why she was not aware of her childbirth, or if she was, it did not occur to her or she was unable, due to her debility or dizziness, which causes may be considered lawful or insuperable to constitute the seventh exempting circumstance (art. 12, Revised Penal Code), to take her child from the thicket where she had given it birth, so as not to leave it abandoned and exposed to the danger of losing its life.
• The act performed by the [the Accused] in the morning in question, by going into the thicket, according to her, to respond to call of nature, notwithstanding the fact that she had fever for a long time, was perfectly lawful. If by doing so she caused a wrong as that of giving birth to her child in that same place and later abandoning it, not because of imprudence or any other reason than that she was overcome by strong dizziness and extreme debility, she should not be blamed therefor because it all happened by mere accident, from liability any person who so acts and behaves under such circumstances (art. 12, subsection 4, Revised Penal Code).
Ty v. People, G.R. No. 149275, September 27, 2004, Per Tinga, J.:
• [Against a B.P. 22 for bouncing checks charged, Accused defended herself claiming that she issued the checks out of fear for what may happen to her mother who was then confined at a hospital.]
• To begin with, there was no showing that the mother’s illness was so life-threatening such that her continued stay in the hospital suffering all its alleged unethical treatment would induce a well-grounded apprehension of her death. Secondly, it is not the law’s intent to say that any fear exempts one from criminal liability much less [the Accused]’s flimsy fear that her mother might commit suicide. In other words, the fear she invokes was not impending or insuperable as to deprive her of all volition and to make her a mere instrument without will, moved exclusively by the hospital’s threats or demands.
References
• Title I – Felonies and Circumstances which Affect Criminal Liability, Book I, Act No. 3815, Revised Penal Code
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/Updated: August 26, 2023
