Short answer. In practice, this should not arise today: Republic Act No. 9346 (2006) prohibits the death penalty in the Philippines, so no one is executed and Article 85's rule for an executed prisoner's unclaimed corpse has no live occasion to apply. As originally written, it sent an unclaimed body to a requesting school or, failing that, a government-funded burial.
What the law says
Unless claimed by his family, the corpse of the culprit shall, upon the completion of the legal proceedings subsequent to the execution, be turned over to the institute of learning or scientific research first applying for it, for the purpose of study and investigation, provided that such institute shall take charge of the decent burial of the remains.
Revised Penal Code, Article 85 — The Corpse Of A Person Executed And Its Burial. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Otherwise, the Director of Prisons shall order the burial of the body of the culprit at government expense, granting permission to be present thereat to the members of the family of the culprit and the friends of the latter.
Revised Penal Code, Article 85 — The Corpse Of A Person Executed And Its Burial. Read the full provision →
What the law says
In no case shall the burial of the body of a person sentenced to death be held with pomp.
Revised Penal Code, Article 85 — The Corpse Of A Person Executed And Its Burial. Read the full provision →
Why this article does not operate in current practice
Article 85 addresses the corpse of a person who has been executed — put to death under a sentence of death. Republic Act No. 9346, enacted in 2006, prohibits the imposition of the death penalty in the Philippines, and the punishment the Revised Penal Code's nomenclature calls death is replaced instead with reclusión perpetua or life imprisonment, depending on which applies. Because no one is executed under current law, the situation Article 85 was written for — disposing of a body after an execution actually took place — does not currently occur.
What the article said would happen to an unclaimed corpse
As originally written, if the corpse was not claimed by his family, Article 85 directed it to be turned over, once legal proceedings after the execution were complete, to the institute of learning or scientific research first applying for it, for the purpose of study and investigation — but only if that institute committed to giving the remains a decent burial afterward.
The fallback if no institute requested the body
If no school or research institute applied to take the body, the article provided a fallback: the government itself would arrange the burial. It directed that the Director of Prisons shall order the burial of the body of the culprit at government expense, while still allowing the family and friends of the person executed to be present at that burial.
A separate limit on how any such burial could be conducted
Article 85 also placed a limit on how a burial under this article could be carried out, regardless of which of the two paths applied: in no case shall the burial of the body of a person sentenced to death be held with pomp. This was a restriction on the manner of burial itself, on top of whichever of the two dispositions — turnover to an institute, or government burial — actually applied to a given case.