Short answer. Often, yes. Under Article 13 of the Revised Penal Code, sufficient provocation or threat by the offended party that immediately preceded the act is a mitigating circumstance. It does not erase the crime, but it can lower the penalty within the range the law allows.
What the law says
That sufficient provocation or threat on the part of the offended party immediately preceded the act
Revised Penal Code, Article 13 — Mitigating Circumstances. Read the full provision →
What the law says
in the immediate vindication of a grave offense
Revised Penal Code, Article 13 — Mitigating Circumstances. Read the full provision →
What the law says
having acted upon an impulse so powerful as naturally to have produced passion or obfuscation
Revised Penal Code, Article 13 — Mitigating Circumstances. Read the full provision →
Provocation is a mitigating circumstance
Article 13 lists the mitigating circumstances — facts that reduce, but do not remove, criminal liability. One of them fits your question: That sufficient provocation or threat on the part of the offended party immediately preceded the act. If the victim provoked you sufficiently right before you acted, the law may treat that as a mitigating circumstance. Unlike a justifying or exempting circumstance, this does not make the act lawful or free you from liability; you are still criminally responsible, but the penalty can be imposed in a lower degree or period.
Three conditions: sufficient, from the victim, immediate
The provocation must meet three conditions. It must be sufficient — proportionate and adequate to stir the offender, not a trivial slight. It must come from the offended party — the very person you acted against, not someone else. And it must immediately precede the act — there must be no appreciable lapse of time in which you could cool off. If a significant interval passed between the provocation and your response, the immediacy is lost, and the circumstance may not apply. All three must be present for provocation to count in your favor under this paragraph.
Related but distinct mitigating circumstances
Article 13 contains neighbors that people often confuse with provocation. Separately, it recognizes acting in the immediate vindication of a grave offense to oneself or close relatives, and having acted upon an impulse so powerful as naturally to have produced passion or obfuscation. These overlap with provocation but have their own requirements, and the same facts should not be counted twice. Which one fits depends on exactly what the victim did and how you responded. Choosing the right circumstance matters, because each has distinct conditions the court will test before allowing it to reduce the penalty.
Limits, and a note on the age paragraph
Mitigating circumstances lower the penalty; they do not erase the offense or assure any particular verdict, and their effect depends on the other circumstances present, including any aggravating ones that may offset them. Note too that Article 13 lists age among its mitigating circumstances, but its age thresholds no longer state current law: Republic Act No. 9344 (2006), as amended by Republic Act No. 10630 (2013), now governs the treatment of children in conflict with the law. For your situation, though, it is the provocation paragraph — sufficient, from the victim, and immediate — that decides whether your penalty is reduced.