Guen Garlejo Aguilar, 29, was arrested last year and charged with killing and dismembering Jane Parangan La Puebla, 26, who is also from the Philippines, on Sept. 7. Aguilar's initial charge of murder carried a mandatory death sentence.

"The charge was reduced to culpable homicide not amounting to murder," said Aguilar's lawyer, Shashi Nathan. The maximum penalty for culpable homicide is life imprisonment.

Nathan said he did not know why the charge was amended during a preliminary inquiry Tuesday.

However, he said he had argued that the murder charge should be reduced because Aguilar had a psychiatric condition and acted with diminished responsibility, and because La Puebla's death resulted from a sudden fight.

"I'm just happy and my client is very relieved," Nathan said.

Aguilar allegedly cut up La Puebla's remains, placed them in plastic bags and dumped them around the wealthy Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore, where many Philippine citizens work.

Aguilar's case will be formally heard in court on May 15, Nathan said.

Following Aguilar's arrest and detention in September, her family and officials from her hometown of Tagudin in Ilocos Sur province, north of Manila, appealed to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to intervene in the case.

They feared Aguilar might suffer the same fate as another maid from the Philippines, Flor Contemplacion, who was executed in Singapore in 1995 for murder despite appeals and outrage from Manila.

Tempers flared over the incident, and the two countries temporarily withdrew their respective ambassadors. Relations were normalized a year later.

About 140,000 foreign maids work in Singapore, many of them trying to escape poverty at home. Most are from the Philippines and Indonesia, while others come other parts of Asia such as Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand.

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