Text of the provision
Art. 248. Murder. - Any person who, not falling within the provisions of Article 246 shall kill another, shall be guilty of murder and shall be punished by reclusion perpetua, to death if committed with any of the following attendant circumstances: 1. With treachery, taking advantage of superior strength, with the aid of armed men, or employing means to weaken the defense or of means or persons to insure or afford impunity. 2. In consideration of a price, reward or promise. 3. By means of inundation, fire, poison, explosion, shipwreck, stranding of a vessel, derailment or assault upon a railroad, fall of an airship, or by means of motor vehicles, or with the use of any other means involving great waste and ruin. 4. On occasion of any of the calamities enumerated in the preceding paragraph, or of an earthquake, eruption of a volcano, destructive cyclone, epidemic or other public calamity. 5. With evident premeditation. 6. With cruelty, by deliberately and inhumanly augmenting the suffering of the victim, or outraging or scoffing at his person or corpse.
Revised Penal Code of the Philippines, Act No. 3815, as amended by Republic Act No. 7659 (1993). Reproduced in full from the text of the amending Act itself, verified word for word against the LawPhil, ChanRobles and Official Gazette renderings of that Act.
What this article means
Murder is homicide plus one of the circumstances listed here. Kill a person outside the parricide article and with none of these circumstances present and the crime is homicide under Article 249; kill with treachery, or in consideration of a price or reward, or by means of fire, poison, explosion or the other listed means, or on the occasion of a calamity, or with evident premeditation, or with cruelty, and the same killing is murder. The circumstance is what qualifies the crime, so it must be both alleged in the information and proved — a qualifying circumstance that is proved but was never pleaded cannot raise homicide to murder.
Related provisions
- Article 246 — Parricide: Killing A Relative.
- Article 249 — The Crime Of Homicide.
This is the amended text. The text above is the article as amended by Republic Act No. 7659 (1993), taken from the text of that Act itself. Reproductions of the Revised Penal Code — including both of the sources this site verifies against — still print the 1930 article, which carries a different penalty. Check which version any source you rely on is giving you.
The death penalty. This article still refers to the penalty of death. Republic Act No. 9346 (2006) prohibits the imposition of the death penalty in the Philippines. In its place the law imposes reclusión perpetua where the Revised Penal Code’s nomenclature is used, or life imprisonment where it is not. Read this article subject to that prohibition.
Cases interpreting this article
- Authorities on this article will be added here as each is verified against primary sources.