ABSTRACT
In the Philippines nocturnity, treachery, premeditation, cruelty or the use of poison in committing a homicide are circumstances that add to the severity of the punishment. When the Americans took possession of the Philippines, they found in force a remarkably suitable system of law, codified, terse and equitable. A man, to be eligible to receive the light penalty for killing his wife’s paramour, must be legally married. During the Spanish regime in the Philippines, Church and State had been so united that a marriage ceremony, to be legal, had to be a Roman Catholic one. A commission sent out by President McKinley dealt promptly with the situation, through the enactment of a statute governing marriages. Perhaps the Philippines Supreme Court believed that pagan marriages were casual matings such as are fairly frequent among the poorer lowlanders, or perhaps it followed court decisions on American Indian marriages.
