Short answer. Yes. An attempt is punished two degrees below the consummated felony, while a frustrated felony drops only one. So the attempt sits one degree below the frustrated stage. Which stage the facts reach is a question of evidence, not of what anyone says was intended.
What the law says
The penalty next lower in degree than that prescribed by law for the consummated felony shall be imposed upon the principal in a frustrated felony.
Revised Penal Code, Article 50 — Penalty For Frustrated Felony. Read the full provision →
What the law says
A penalty lower by two degrees than that prescribed by law for the consummated felony shall be imposed upon the principals in an attempt to commit a felony.
Revised Penal Code, Article 51 — Penalty For Attempted Crimes. Read the full provision →
The two provisions read together
Article 50 imposes the penalty next lower in degree than that prescribed by law for the consummated felony on the principal in a frustrated felony. Article 51 imposes a penalty lower by two degrees than that prescribed by law for the consummated felony on the principals in an attempt. Both measure downwards from the same starting point, the penalty for the finished crime, so the gap between them is exactly one degree. Neither article works from the other; each is computed independently from the consummated offence.
What separates an attempt from a frustration
The line is drawn by how far execution went. An attempt is where the offender began carrying out the crime by overt acts but did not perform all the acts that would produce it, having been stopped or having desisted for some cause other than his own change of heart. Frustration is where he did perform all of them and the crime still failed to happen. Because the two stages sit a degree apart, this distinction often carries more weight in a case than any argument about circumstances, and both sides usually contest it.
Degrees are steps, and the peso figures have changed
A degree is a position on the Code's ordered list of penalties, so lowering by two degrees means moving two places down that list, not halving a number of years. Two further cautions. Later legislation rewrote the fines and the property-value thresholds throughout the Code, so the penalty for a completed offence measured by value may not be what an older printing shows. And the reduced penalty is a starting point that the ordinary rules on mitigating and aggravating circumstances then work on.
Why the stage is worth arguing about
The stage is charged in the information and proved at trial like any other element, which means it can also be disputed. What acts were completed, what remained to be done, and why the result did not follow are all evidentiary questions, and medical findings, recovered objects and eyewitness accounts of the sequence usually decide them. Nobody can tell you in advance how a court will characterise a particular incident. What a lawyer will want to see first is the information, the sworn statements, and any report describing what was actually done.
Related provisions
- Revised Penal Code, Article 50 — Penalty For Frustrated Felony
- Revised Penal Code, Article 51 — Penalty For Attempted Crimes