[ Act No. 2726, December 20, 1917 ]

AN ACT ESTABLISHING CASES OF EXCEPTION IN THE APPLICATION OF THE DEATH PENALTY AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippines in Legislature assembled and by the authority of the same:

SECTION 1. The death penalty shall be imposed in all cases in which it must be imposed under existing law, except in the following:

First. When the guilty person was less than eighteen years of age at the time of the commission of the crime; and Second. When the vote upon the sentence in the second instance by the magistrates of the Supreme Court participating in the voting is not unanimous with regard to the propriety of the imposition of the death penalty.

SEC. 2. In the cases of exception mentioned in the preceding section, there shall be imposed upon the guilty person, instead of the death penalty, the penalty of thirty years of imprisonment in case the crime of which he has been convicted is penalized by an Act of the Philippine Commission or the Philippine Legislature, and the penalty immediately below the death penalty in the respective scale of the Penal Code if it is penalized by said Code.

SEC. 3. All Acts or parts of Acts inconsistent with this Act are hereby repealed.

SEC. 4. This Act shall take effect immediately.

Approved, December 20, 1917.