Saturday, July 14, 2007

No Crime of Frustrated Theft

Maybe the Diño/Flores rulings are, in some degree, grounded in common sense. Yet they do not align with the legislated framework of the crime of theft. The Revised Penal Code provisions on theft have not been designed in such fashion as to accommodate said rulings. Again, there is no language in Article 308 that expressly or impliedly allows that the “free disposition of the items stolen” is in any way determinative of whether the crime of theft has been produced. Diño itself did not rely on Philippine laws or jurisprudence to bolster its conclusion, and the later Flores was ultimately content in relying on Diño alone for legal support. These cases do not enjoy the weight of stare decisis, and even if they did, their erroneous appreciation of our law on theft leave them susceptible to reversal. The same holds true of Empilis, a regrettably stray decision which has not since found favor from this Court.

We thus conclude that under the Revised Penal Code, there is no crime of frustrated theft. (Valenzuela v. People, G.R. No. 160188, June 21, 2007)