Concept
An impossible crime is a felony in which the offender performs an act with criminal intent, but the intended offense cannot be accomplished because completion is inherently impossible or because the means used are inadequate or ineffectual.
Its basis is Article 4(2) of the Revised Penal Code, which extends criminal liability to a person who performs an act that would be an offense against persons or property were it not for the inherent impossibility of accomplishment or the employment of inadequate or ineffectual means.
The law punishes the offender's revealed criminal purpose, not the production of the intended harm. The act is socially dangerous because the actor has crossed from mere thought into overt conduct directed at a punishable result.
Impossible crime is not an attempt to punish imagination. There must be an external act, a punishable objective if the actor's supposed facts were true, and a legal reason why the objective could not be consummated.
Elements
The following requisites must concur:
- The offender performs an act that would be an offense against persons or property.
- The act is done with evil intent.
- The intended offense cannot be accomplished because accomplishment is inherently impossible, or because the means employed are inadequate or ineffectual.
- The act performed does not constitute another distinct felony or offense for which the offender should instead be punished.
These requisites keep impossible crime within a narrow field. The doctrine does not convert every failed criminal plan into a punishable felony; it applies only when the law treats the offender's overt but impossible conduct as independently punishable.
Act That Would Be an Offense Against Persons or Property
The intended offense must belong to crimes against persons or crimes against property. The usual applications involve attempted killing, physical injury, theft, robbery, malicious mischief, or similar offenses where the actor directs conduct against a supposed person, body, property, or proprietary interest.
The phrase would be an offense requires a comparison between the facts as the offender believed them to be and the facts as they actually existed. If the supposed facts had been real, the act should amount to an offense against persons or property.
Thus, shooting at a bed where the intended victim is believed to be sleeping may fall under impossible crime if the victim is not there and no other felony is committed. Stabbing a body already dead, while believing the person to be alive, may also be an impossible crime because homicide or murder cannot be committed against one who is already dead.
By contrast, an impossible objective relating to public order, public interest, chastity, honor, or other classes of crimes is not punished as impossible crime under Article 4(2). If the conduct is punishable under another provision or special law, liability must be based on that actual offense.
Evil Intent
Impossible crime requires criminal intent. The actor must intend to commit the offense that turns out to be impossible.
There is no impossible crime through negligence. Culpa punishes imprudence or lack of care that produces a legally recognized result; impossible crime punishes a deliberate criminal purpose manifested by an overt act despite the absence of the intended result.
Evil intent is inferred from objective conduct, surrounding circumstances, weapons or instruments used, statements, prior acts, target selected, and the natural consequences that the actor sought to bring about. It is not inferred from mere preparation, fantasy, or morally suspicious behavior unconnected to an overt act.
If the accused knows from the beginning that the object cannot be injured or the means cannot work, criminal intent may be absent because the act may be a joke, simulation, superstition, or noncriminal gesture. The doctrine assumes that the offender believes in the criminal efficacy of the act.
Inherent Impossibility
Inherent impossibility exists when the intended offense cannot be consummated because the object, person, or legal situation makes completion impossible from the start.
The impossibility must arise from the nature of the situation, not merely from the offender's poor execution. A missed shot at a living person is not inherently impossible because the victim could have been hit; a shot fired at an empty room believed to contain the victim is impossible because there is no living target to kill.
Inherent impossibility may be factual, as where the person or property needed for the offense is absent. It may also be legal, as where the actor's intended result cannot constitute the contemplated offense because an essential legal element is lacking.
The controlling point is that the intended offense is impossible of accomplishment even if the actor does everything planned. The failure is built into the facts or the law, rather than caused by interruption, resistance, mistake in aim, rescue, medical treatment, or similar external causes.
Inadequate or Ineffectual Means
Means are inadequate when they are insufficient in quantity, strength, or manner of use to produce the intended offense. They are ineffectual when, by their nature or condition, they cannot produce the intended result.
Administering a substance believed to be poison may be an impossible crime if the substance is harmless. Using too small a dose of an otherwise harmful substance may involve inadequate means if the amount cannot cause the intended death or injury.
An unloaded firearm believed to be loaded illustrates ineffectual means, because the instrument as used cannot discharge a bullet. A loaded firearm that jams unexpectedly may instead present attempted felony if the means were objectively capable and the failure resulted from a cause independent of the offender's will.
The distinction is functional. If the means could produce the crime under ordinary circumstances but failed because of accidental interruption or poor performance, the case tends toward attempt. If the means could not produce the crime at all in the actual circumstances, the case tends toward impossible crime.
Relation to Attempted and Frustrated Felonies
Impossible crime is separate from the stages of execution of the target felony. The target offense is not attempted, frustrated, or consummated because the law treats the intended result as impossible from the relevant point of view.
| Point of Comparison | Attempted Felony | Frustrated Felony | Impossible Crime |
|---|---|---|---|
| Possibility of completion | The felony is possible, but execution is not completed. | The felony is possible, and all acts of execution are performed. | The contemplated offense cannot be accomplished. |
| Cause of non-consummation | Cause other than spontaneous desistance prevents completion of acts. | Cause independent of the offender prevents the result. | Inherent impossibility or inadequate or ineffectual means prevents the result. |
| Legal treatment | Penalty is based on the attempted stage of the target felony. | Penalty is based on the frustrated stage of the target felony. | Penalty is the special penalty for impossible crime. |
| Typical example | Offender fires at a living victim but misses. | Offender inflicts a mortal wound, but the victim survives due to timely treatment. | Offender fires at a bed believing the victim is there, but the victim is absent. |
The decisive inquiry is not merely whether the offender failed. The inquiry is why the offense failed: impossibility points to impossible crime; interruption or failure in execution of a possible felony points to attempted or frustrated felony.
Effect of Another Punishable Offense
Impossible crime applies only when the act performed is not itself punishable as another felony. If the same conduct satisfies all elements of a separate offense, the offender is liable for that offense, not for impossible crime as a substitute label.
This rule prevents double characterization of one act. For example, if the conduct causes actual physical injuries, property damage, unlawful entry, illegal possession, discharge of firearm, or another punishable act, liability must be analyzed under the offense actually committed.
The intended but impossible offense may still explain intent, motive, or aggravating circumstances when relevant. It does not replace the concrete offense that the law directly punishes.
Illustrative Applications
Offenses Against Persons
Impossible crime may arise when the offender intends to kill or injure a person who, unknown to the offender, is absent, already dead, or otherwise incapable of being the subject of the intended bodily offense.
If the intended victim is alive and present, failure to kill is ordinarily not impossible crime. The case may be attempted or frustrated homicide or murder, depending on the acts performed, the wound inflicted, the intent to kill, and the reason death did not result.
If the offender merely performs preparatory acts, such as procuring a weapon or going to the supposed location of the victim without beginning an overt act directed against the victim, there is no impossible crime. Criminal liability requires execution, not mere preparation.
Offenses Against Property
Impossible crime may arise when the offender intends to steal property that is not present, not capable of appropriation, or not subject to the contemplated property offense in the actual circumstances.
Trying to pick an empty pocket, opening an empty drawer believed to contain money, or taking property believed to belong to another when the legal situation prevents theft may be analyzed under impossible crime if no other offense is committed.
If the offender actually takes personal property belonging to another with intent to gain, theft is consummated upon unlawful taking. The absence of opportunity to dispose of the property or the immediate recovery of the property does not make the offense impossible.
Legal Consequences
Impossible crime is punished under Article 59 by arresto mayor or fine as fixed by law. The penalty is not derived by lowering the penalty for the intended felony by one or two degrees.
The penalty reflects the absence of the intended material harm while still recognizing the offender's criminal perversity. The court may consider the degree of social danger, the seriousness of the intended offense, the proximity of the act to actual harm, and the circumstances showing criminality.
Civil liability does not automatically arise from the impossible objective because the intended injury or loss did not occur. However, actual damage, injury, or legally recognized loss caused by the acts may give rise to civil liability or to liability for a separate offense.
Impossible crime may coexist factually with aggravating or mitigating circumstances only when those circumstances are legally compatible with the offense charged. Circumstances tied to the actual commission of a target felony cannot be mechanically imported if the target felony was never committed.
Doctrinal Limits
The doctrine does not punish mere evil thoughts, impossible wishes, or abandoned plans. The offender must have performed an act that directly manifests the intended offense.
It does not apply when the intended act, even under the offender's supposed facts, would not be an offense against persons or property. Criminal law does not create impossible crime outside the statutory boundary.
It does not apply when the intended offense is possible but the offender is stopped, resisted, discovered, misses the target, or fails because of poor execution. Those situations belong to the ordinary rules on attempted or frustrated felonies when their elements are present.
It does not apply when a specific offense under the Revised Penal Code or a special penal law fully covers the conduct. The more concrete offense controls because impossible crime is residual in operation.
In every case, the analysis must identify the intended offense, the overt act, the offender's intent, the precise reason consummation was impossible, and the absence of another punishable offense that better describes the conduct.