This bug has been fixed in CVS.

Snapshots of the sources are packaged every three hours; this change
will be in the next snapshot. You can grab the snapshot at
http://snaps.php.net/.
 
Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP better.

This bug still (again?) exists in 5.0.2/Win32!

This bug is still reproducible in 5.4 with this code:

<?php

function throwme($arg)
{
    throw new Exception;
}

class foo {
  function __construct() {
    echo "Inside constructor\n";
    throwme($this);
  }

  function __destruct() {
    echo "Inside destructor\n";
  }
}

try {
  $bar = new foo;
} catch(Exception $exc) {
  echo "Caught exception!\n";
}

This produces:
Inside constructor
Caught exception!
Inside destructor

This is because the object is kept as part of "args" in the exception's 
backtrace. Better solution is needed here, the one in 
f5cf052225ff4bc5ba7fe2c8b9f0ffcd980cac6f does not solve the whole issue.

Fixed in PHP-7.1 only, because the fix causes minor BC break.
http://git.php.net/?p=php-src.git;a=commitdiff;h=afd3e39d6697e36d3b92cee5da911e4ea0de3901

How come that calling exit instead of throwing an exception still produces the old behavior?

<?php
class A {
  function __construct() {
    exit;
    echo "not reached\n";
  }
  function __destruct() {
    echo "fail\n";
  }
}
new A;