Category Archives: Sentencing Law

Sentencing Law

The subject on sentencing law is not really important to the general public, but it’s included in this Forum for reference and discussion. Foreign jurisdictions have a more extensive online record and discussion on sentencing law (for instance, the sentencing project and the sentencing law and policy. Let’s do that here, still with the Plain Language Initiative in mind.

A sentence, in law, is the penalty imposed by the court in a criminal case against a person, known as the “accused”, who is found guilty of committing the crime charged. There is no law known as sentencing law in the Philippines. For our purposes, however, it refers Continue reading

Cases after the death of Death Penalty

We previously wrote that on 24 June 2006, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed into law Republic Act No. 9346, entitled ‘An Act Prohibiting the Imposition of Death Penalty in the Philippines‘. Let’s examine the Supreme Court decisions after the abolition of the Death Penalty.

The case of People of the Philippines vs. Quiachon (G.R. 170236, 31 AUgust 2006) involves an accused who raped his 8-year old daughter, a deaf-mute. Under Article 266-B of the Revised Penal Code, the imposable penalty should have been death. With the abolition of the Death Penalty, however, the penalty was reduced to reclusion perpetua, without the possibility of parole under the Indeterminate Sentence Law.

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