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Statement on the Death Penalty

Press Statements

The precipitate approval of the bill proposing the reimposition of the death penalty by the Committee on Justice on Wednesday confirms the plan to railroad the measure.

The sinister train ferrying the retrogressive bill is expected to reach its terminal – the plenary session – next week.

The positions of the various resource persons and organizations against the death penalty were never discussed by the mother committee like:

  1. The death penalty desecrates the right to life, which is sacrosanct and inviolable, and is an affront to human dignity.

  2. Empirical data gathered across the globe from government and non-government sources attest that the death penalty through the years has not been a deterrent to crime.

  3. The death penalty exacerbates the culture of violence and its revival adds the State-sanctioned killing to the unabated extra-judicial killings related to the deadly campaign against the drug menace.

  4. The death penalty is a smokescreen to conceal the ineptitude and corruption of law enforcers even as it fails to address the flawed judicial system.

  5. The death penalty further marginalizes and victimizes the poor who can neither retain competent counsel nor influence court processes.

  6. The capital punishment endorses punitive and retributive justice instead of promoting the modern concept of penology on restorative justice which reforms the convict and prepares his reintegration into society.

  7. The reimposition of the death penalty is a violation of the country’s commitment to abolish capital punishment as a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Second Optional Protocol on the ICCPR.

The fundamental question on the existence of compelling reasons for the revival of the death penalty as required by the Constitution was never answered.

The approval of the bill by the Congress and the President do not per se comply with the requirement on compelling reasons.

In fact, there would never be compelling reasons to abrogate life and derogate the sanctity and inviolability of life.

EDCEL C. LAGMAN