Article 27 of the Revised Penal Code: Duration of penalties

For example, the article says:

For the three periods (minimum, medium and maximum) into which most of these penalties are divided, see the table of the duration of penalties.

Not exactly. Republic Act No. 7659 (1993) wrote the range of twenty years and one day to forty years into Article 27. In People v. Lucas (1995), the Supreme Court En Banc held that there was "no clear legislative intent to alter its original classification as an indivisible penalty. It shall then remain as an indivisible penalty."

This matters because an indivisible penalty is not split into minimum, medium and maximum periods. Article 63 says a single indivisible penalty is applied by the courts "regardless of any mitigating or aggravating circumstances". So a court that imposes reclusion perpetua does not choose a number of years between twenty and forty.

Article 27 as amended does not mention death. The death penalty is no longer imposed: Section 1 of Republic Act No. 9346 (2006) says "The Imposition of the penalty of death is hereby prohibited." In its place, Section 2 imposes reclusion perpetua "when the law violated makes use of the nomenclature of the penalties of the Revised Penal Code". Section 3 adds that persons convicted of offenses punished with reclusion perpetua, or whose sentences are reduced to it by that law, "shall not be eligible for parole" under the Indeterminate Sentence Law.

Some penalties in Article 27 are not prison terms:

• Temporary disqualification and suspension last as long as prision mayor and prision correccional respectively. When they are imposed as accessory penalties, they last as long as the main (principal) penalty.
• Destierro lasts from six months and one day to six years. Article 87 says a person sentenced to destierro may not enter the place or places named in the sentence, within the radius it sets, which is not more than 250 and not less than 25 kilometers.
• Bond to keep the peace covers whatever period the court sets.