SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE PHASES OF FELONY
Each felony under the Revised Penal Code has a “subjective phase,” or that portion of the acts constituting the crime included between the act which begins the commission of the crime and the last act performed by the offender which, with prior acts, should result in the consummated crime. After that point has been breached, the subjective phase ends and the objective phase begins. It has been held that if the offender never passes the subjective phase of the offense, the crime is merely attempted. On the other hand, the subjective phase is completely passed in case of frustrated crimes, for in such instances, “[s]ubjectively the crime is complete.”
Truly, an easy distinction lies between consummated and frustrated felonies on one hand, and attempted felonies on the other. So long as the offender fails to complete all the acts of execution despite commencing the commission of a felony, the crime is undoubtedly in the attempted stage. Since the specific acts of execution that define each crime under the Revised Penal Code are generally enumerated in the code itself, the task of ascertaining whether a crime is attempted only would need to compare the acts actually performed by the accused as against the acts that constitute the felony under the Revised Penal Code.
(People vs. Villanueva, G.R. No. 160188, June 21, 2007)
