ARTICLE 14, PARAGRAPH 12- AGGRAVATING CIRCUMSTANCES

That the crime be committed by means of inundation, fire, poison, explosion, stranding of a vessel or international damage thereto, derailment of a locomotive, or by the use of any other artifice involving great waste and ruin.

BASIS
- Means and ways employed

• The circumstances listed down must be used by the offender as a means to accomplish a criminal purpose otherwise it cannot be considered to increase the penalty or to change the nature of the offense.
• When any of the circumstances is already qualified in another aggravating circumstance, they will only be considered as a generic aggravating circumstance.

By means of fire

- There should be an actual design to kill and that the use of fire should be purposely adopted as a means to that end
- If the house was set on fire after killing the victim, there would be two separate crimes because the fire was not used as a means to kill the victim.

By means of explosion

- This offense is a crime involving destruction and the punishment is death. But if this was used as a means to kill someone, it becomes murder if the victim dies as a direct consequence thereof.

By means of derailment of locomotive

- If the damage done by the derailment is to property only, it is damage to means of communication under ART 330
- If the damage results in the killing of a person without intent, it is a complex crime of damage to means of communication with homicide.
- If it results in killing of a person with intent on the part of the offender, it is murder because the derailment was merely a means of used to kill the victim
- There is no need to consider this circumstance for the purpose of increasing the penalty if it already qualifies as murder because, as provided in ART 62 par. 1, when the aggravating circumstance is included by the law in defining a crime, it shall not be taken into consideration for the purpose of increasing the penalty.