The expression “even hardened convicts are scared of death” fails to show that the death penalty is a deterrent to the commission of “heinous” crimes because it is a statement of convicts after they have committed the offense.

The “fear of death” of convicts does not refer to the death penalty but their apprehension about their personal safety while in prison from attacks of fellow inmates like in the case of drug lord Jaybee Sebastian.

Moreover, this expression coming from a convict is a post-crime commission which is irrelevant to deterrence.

Empirical data show that a person who deliberately commits a crime does not think beforehand of the imposable penalty.

With more reason, reckoning the capital punishment is remotest to a person who commits a crime at the spur of the moment or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Amnesty International concludes that “The threat of execution at some future date is unlikely to enter the minds of those acting under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, those who are in the grip of fear or rage, those who are panicking while committing another crime (such as a robbery), or those who suffer from mental illness or mental retardation and do not fully understand the gravity of their crime.”

In a 2009 study entitled Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis, American police chiefs rank the death penalty last in their priorities for effective crime reduction. In the study, the top cops of the United States do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder, and even rated it as “one of most inefficient uses of taxpayer dollars in fighting crime”.

A survey of experts from the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the Law and Society Association also showed that the overwhelming majority of criminologists themselves or over 80% did not believe that the death penalty is a proven deterrent to homicide (M. Radelet and R. Akers, Deterrence and the Death Penalty: The Views of the Experts, 1995).

EDCEL C. LAGMAN

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

While it is true that a Member of the Cabinet serves at the pleasure of the President, the Vice President holding a Cabinet portfolio must be treated differently from the rest of the Cabinet Members for the following reasons:

1. A Vice President’s appointment in the Cabinet has constitutional basis or anchorage, unlike all of the other Cabinet Members who are political appointees. The second paragraph of Section 3 of Article VII of the Constitution provides: “The Vice-President may be appointed as a Member of the Cabinet.” This makes the Vice President distinct from the other Cabinet Members.

   Following the Constitution, Vice Presidents after the EDSA People Power Revolution had been invariably extended appointments to the Cabinet:

   1. Vice President Salvador Laurel was appointed Secretary of Foreign Affairs by President Corazon Aquino;

   2. Vice President Joseph Estrada was appointed Chairman of the Anti-Crime Commission with Cabinet rank by President Fidel Ramos;

   3. Vice President Gloria Arroyo was appointed Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development by President Estrada.

   4. Vice President Noli de Castro was appointed Housing Secretary by President Arroyo. He was concurrently Presidential Adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers.

   5. Vice President Jejomar Binay was appointed Housing Secretary by President Benigno Aquino. He also headed Task Force OFW.

   6. Vice President Leni Robredo was appointed Housing Secretary by President Duterte despite his initial decision not to give Robredo a Cabinet post in deference to Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.

2. The Vice President, as Member of the Cabinet, is the only incumbent elected member of the President’s Official Family, while the rest may even be unelectable.

3. As a Cabinet appointee, the Vice President requires no confirmation by the Commission on Appointments, unlike the rest who have to pass the gamut of the confirmation process. Again, the second paragraph of Section 3 of Article VII provides: “Such appointment requires no confirmation.”

4. Unlike the other Members of the Cabinet, the Vice President is the first in line in the succession for President.

5. As a Cabinet Member, the Vice President could not be considered merely as an alter ego of the President because he or she has a distinct and separate popular and constitutional mandate.

Giving Vice President Leni Robredo the raw deal as Housing Secretary is consummate imprudence. The unceremonious manner by which Robredo was eased out from the Cabinet smacks of inordinate partisanship, gross impropriety and absence of requisite politesse.

EDCEL C. LAGMAN

With the marginalization of Vice President Leni Robredo by the Duterte administration which prompted her resignation as Housing Secretary, the Liberal Party (LP) must rethink its alliance with President Duterte’s ruling party, the PDP-Laban.

Robredo is the highest ranking LP-elected official.

Righteous indignation impelled Robredo’s quitting her cabinet post since no self-respecting official must suffer any further the grave assaults on her person and position, like the following:

1. It is the height of imprudence and discourtesy to bar Robredo, a cabinet member, from attending cabinet meetings.

2. The series of macho rubbish directed on Robredo during cabinet meetings and other occasions offends decency.

3. It is too much an insult to a sitting Vice President for President Duterte to intimate his preference for Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. as vice president, the very candidate Robredo beat in the elections and whose electoral protest Duterte is inclined to support.

The LP’s disengagement from the supermajority and assuming the role of political opposition will strengthen the authentic minority as an indispensable institution in a democracy.

The break will also further energize efforts to contain and oppose administration policies violative of the Constitution and inimical to the people’s welfare.

EDCEL C. LAGMAN