Art. 266. Slight physical injuries and maltreatment. — The crime of slight physical injuries shall be punished:
1. By arresto menor when the offender has inflicted physical injuries which shall incapacitate the offended party for labor from one to nine days, or shall require medical attendance during the same period.
2. By arresto menor or a fine not exceeding 20 pesos and censure when the offender has caused physical injuries which do not prevent the offended party from engaging in his habitual work nor require medical assistance.
3. By arresto menor in its minimum period or a fine not exceeding 50 pesos when the offender shall ill-treat another by deed without causing any injury.
Three kinds of slight physical injuries:
1. Physical injuries which incapacitated the offended party for labor from one to nine days or required medical attendance during the same period;
2. Physical injuries which do not prevent the offended party from engaging in his habitual work or which did not require medical attendance;
3. Ill-treatment of another by deed without causing any injury.
A physical injury which incapacitates the offended party from working for 9 days and some hours without amounting to 10 days, is a slight physical injury.
Examples: contusion on the face or black eye
In the absence of evidence to show actual injury, as when the deceased died of other causes and there is no evidence as to how many days the deceased lived after the injury, the crime is only slight physical injury, it appearing that the wounds inflicted by the accused could not have caused death.
Any physical violence which does not produce injury, such as slapping the face of the offended party, without causing dishonor, is slight physical injury
Where the original information was for slight physical injuries, in the belief of the fiscal that the wound suffered by the accused would heal after 8 days but in the preliminary investigation conducted by the justice of the peace, it was found that the wound would heal after 30 days, the act which converted the crime into a more serious one had SUPERVENED after the filing of the original information, this supervening event can still be the subject of AMENDMENT or of a NEW CHARGE without necessarily placing the accused in double jeopardy.
The jurisdiction of the RTC by virtue of the appeal is limited to the crime object of the judgment, from which the appeal has been taken. It has no jurisdiction to impose a sentence on the accused, on appeal from the MTC over which the MTC has no jurisdiction.
is committed by the inflicting of pain although there is no wound
Leonor D. Boado, Notes and Cases on the Revised Penal Code, 2004 ed.
Luis B. Reyes, The Revised Penal Code, Book II, 2001 ed.