Short answer. Yes. Article 92 provides that penalties imposed by final sentence prescribe, over periods graduated by how grave the penalty is — from one year for light penalties up to twenty years for the gravest. The period runs from the day the convict evades the service of his sentence.
What the law says
The penalties imposed by final sentence prescribe as follows: 1. Death and reclusion perpetua, in twenty years; 2. Other afflictive penalties, in fifteen years; 3. Correctional penalties, in ten years
Revised Penal Code, Article 92 — When Penalties Prescribe. Read the full provision →
A penalty can prescribe as well as an offence
Article 92 provides that the penalties imposed by final sentence prescribe as follows: 1. Death and reclusion perpetua, in twenty years; 2. Other afflictive penalties, in fifteen years; 3. Correctional penalties, in ten years, with a shorter period for arresto mayor and the shortest of all for light penalties. Two different clocks therefore exist in the Code. One limits the time to prosecute an offence at all; this one limits the time within which an already final sentence may still be enforced against the person it was imposed on.
The period runs from evasion
Prescription of a penalty presupposes that the convict got away. The Code counts the period from the day he evades the service of his sentence, so it does not begin at conviction, and it does not run for someone who is serving. The Code also provides that the running is interrupted if he gives himself up, is captured, goes to a foreign country with which this country has no extradition treaty, or commits another offence before the period expires. Each of those is a factual event that has to be established from the record.
Which bracket applies depends on the penalty imposed
The periods attach to the classification of the penalty, not to the name of the crime, so the first step is always to read the dispositive portion of the judgment and identify what was actually imposed. Two cautions on the text. Later legislation prohibited the imposition of the death penalty, so the first bracket is of historical rather than practical interest. And separate legislation revised many of the peso figures throughout the Code, which can change which class of penalty an offence now falls into.
What this does not mean
Nothing here should be read as advice to stay away and wait. A person at large under a final sentence is exposed to arrest throughout the period, the running is interrupted by capture, and evading service of sentence is itself an offence under the Code. Prescription of a penalty is a rule courts apply after the fact, not a plan. Where the question has genuinely arisen — an old judgment surfacing, a warrant of long standing — the documents that matter are the judgment, its entry of finality, and the record of what happened afterwards.