Text of the provision
Art. 13. Mitigating circumstances. -The following are mitigating circumstances: 1. Those mentioned in the preceding chapter, when all the requisites necessary to justify the act or to exempt from criminal liability in the respective cases are not attendant. 2. That the offender is under eighteen years of age or over seventy years. In the case of the minor, he shall be proceeded against in accordance with the provisions of article 80. 3. That the offender had no intention to commit so grave a wrong as that committed. 4. That sufficient provocation or threat on the part of the offended party immediately preceded the act. 5. That the act was committed in the immediate vindication of a grave offense to the one committing the felony (delito), his spouse, ascendants, descendants, legitimate, natural, or adopted brothers or sisters, or relatives by affinity within the same degrees. 6. That of having acted upon an impulse so powerful as naturally to have produced passion or obfuscation. 7. That the offender had voluntarily surrendered himself to a person in authority or his agents, or that he had voluntarily confessed his guilt before the court prior to the presentation of the evidence for the prosecution. 8. That the offender is deaf and dumb, blind or otherwise suffering some physical defect which thus restricts his means of action, defense, or communication with his fellow beings. 9. Such illness of the offender as would diminish the exercise of the will-power of the offender without however depriving him of consciousness of his acts. 10. And, finally, any other circumstance of a similar nature and analogous to those above mentioned.
Revised Penal Code of the Philippines, Act No. 3815, as amended. Reproduced in full. The three sources consulted do not read identically here; the text above is the reading carried by two of the three, including the Official Gazette.
What this article means
These do not excuse the crime; they lower the penalty within the range the law fixes. The list runs from an incomplete justifying or exempting circumstance (all the requisites of Article 11 or 12 present except one), through age, lack of intention to commit so grave a wrong, sufficient provocation, immediate vindication of a grave offence, passion or obfuscation, voluntary surrender and voluntary plea of guilt, physical defect, and illness that diminishes willpower — ending with any other circumstance of a similar nature and analogous to those mentioned. That last paragraph is why the list is not closed.
Related provisions
- Article 12 — Exempting Circumstances: Insanity, Accident And Minority.
- Article 15 — Alternative Circumstances: Relationship, Intoxication And Education.
On this text. This article is reproduced as the Revised Penal Code enacted it, verified word-for-word against two independent sources. Republic Act No. 10951 (2017) revised the penalty amounts in many other articles of this Code; where an amount appears below it is the figure this article itself carries.
Minority. The age thresholds in this article are no longer the governing rule. Republic Act No. 9344 (2006), as amended by Republic Act No. 10630 (2013), exempts from criminal liability a child who was fifteen years of age or under at the time of the offence, and a child above fifteen but below eighteen unless that child acted with discernment; an exempt child goes through an intervention or diversion programme instead of a prosecution. Read the paragraphs below on age subject to that Act — and note that the Article 80 procedure they point to no longer exists.
Cases interpreting this article
- Authorities on this article will be added here as each is verified against primary sources.