The Three Stages of Crimes: Explained

Generally, all crimes have three stages of execution which are as follows:

1. Attempted;
2. Frustrated;
3. Consummated

As such, the penal sanction for a crime will vary depending on the level of execution which the perpetrator achieved.

Article 6 of the Revised Penal Code provides that there in an attempted felony when the offender commences the commission of a felony directly by overt acts, and does not perform all the acts of execution which should produce the felony by some reason of cause or accident other than his own spontaneous desistance.

It is worthy of note that an important keyword is that the perpetrator must have committed overt acts. An overt act has been defined as some physical activity or deed, indicating the intention to commit a particular crime, more than a mere planning or preparation, which if carried to its complete termination following its natural course, without being frustrated by external obstacles nor by the voluntary desistance of the perpetrator, will logically and necessarily ripen into a crime.

However, an overt act must be distinguished from preparatory acts. A preparatory act is an act which will not logically and necessarily ripen into a crime. If someone bought a poison from a drugstore, in preparation for killing another, by means of poison, such act is merely a preparatory act.

Another important term with respect to the attempted stage of a crime is spontaneous desistance. In the case of People vs. Villacorte, the Supreme Court ruled that a person who takes part in planning a criminal act but desists in its actual commission is exempt from criminal liability. In another case, it was explained that the desistance may be through fear or remorse. It is not necessary that it be actuated by a good motive.

Moving forward, the requisites of a frustrated felony are as follows:

1. The offender performs all the acts of execution;
2. All the acts performed would produce the felony as a consequence;
3. But the felony is not produced;
4. By reason of causes independent of the will of the perpetrator.

Thus, in a frustrated felony the offender must perform all the acts of execution. Nothing more is left to be done by the offender, because he has performed the last act necessary to produce the crime. In the case of People vs. Honrada, where the accused stabbed the offended party in the abdomen, penetrating the liver, and in the chest. It was only the prompt and skillful medical treatment which the offended party received that saved his life.

Another worthy of note is that the cause which prevented the felony being consummated must be independent of the will of the perpetrator. These certain causes may be the intervention of third persons who prevented the consummation of the offense or may be due to the perpetrator’s will. Therefore, if the crime is not produced because of the offender himself prevented its consummation, there is no frustrated felony, for the 4^th element is not present.

The last stage of a crime is the consummated felony. A felony is consummated is when all the elements necessary for its execution and accomplishment are present. Every crime has its own elements which must all be present to constitute a culpable violation of a precept law. A concrete example is the crime of homicide where the death of the victim is an element of the offense, if that element is absent, because the victim did not die, the crime is not consummated.