duration of reclusion perpetua

Before ending this opinion, it is needful to devote a few words to the amended judgment of the Trial Court which changed the penalty originally imposed on the accused –- “TWENTY (20) YEARS of reclusion perpetua” -- ­to THIRTY (30) years of reclusion perpetua.” There is no need for a Trial Court to specify the duration in years of reclusion perpetua whenever it is imposed as a penalty in any proper case. Article 27 of the Revised Penal Code sets forth generally the minimum and maximum ranges of all the penalties in the Code except as regards the penalty of reclusion perpetua.1 The article simply declares that any person “sentenced to any of the perpetual penalties shall be pardoned after under?going the penalty for thirty years, unless such person by reason of his conduct or some other serious cause shall be considered by the Chief Executive as unworthy of pardon.” The provision's intendment is that a person condemned to undergo the penalty of reclusion perpetua shall remain in prison perpetually, or for the rest of his natural life; however, he becomes eligible for pardon by the Chief Executive after he shall have been imprisoned for at least thirty years, unless he is deemed unworthy of such a pardon. This period of thirty (30) years vis a vis reclusion perpetua is reiterated in Article 70 of the code. Said article pertinently provides that in applying the so called “three-fold rule” -- i.e., that “(w)hen the culprit has to serve two or more penalties, ** ** the maximum duration of the convict's sentence shall not be more than three-fold the length of time corresponding to the most severe of the penalties imposed upon him” -- “the duration of perpetual penalties (pena perpetua) shall be computed at thirty years.” But as should at once be perceived, the imputation of a thirty-year duration to reclusion perpetua in Articles 27 and 70 is, as this Court has recently had occasion to point out, “only to serve as the basis for determining the convict's eligibility for pardon or for the application of the three-­fold rule in the service of multiple penalties.”1 It was thus incorrect for the Trial Court to specify the duration of thirty (30) years in relation to the penalty of reclusion perpetua imposed by it on the accused in this case.

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