MANILA, 8 June 2006 — With both houses of Congress delivering the blows yesterday, the Philippine death penalty law is now dead.
Ignoring protests from relatives of crime victims, a joint committee of the Senate and House of Representatives approved the consolidated bill calling for the repeal of a 1993 law that brought back capital punishment and a subsequent law that prescribed lethal injection as punishment.
All of the 16 senators present during yesterday’s session voted to repeal the death penalty law. In the House of Representatives, 119 for repeal, while only 20 voted against.
The bill will be sent to Malacañang Palace for the president’s signature but lawmakers said that would amount to mere formality since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo herself had pushed for the repeal of the controversial law.
“It’s dead. As soon as President Arroyo signs the bill into law, there’s no more death penalty to speak of,” said Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., one of the principal authors of the Senate version of the bill, together with Sens. Joker Arroyo, Richard Gordon and Manuel Villar.
Once capital punishment is abolished, the strongest legal punishment in the Philippines would be life imprisonment, lawmakers said.
Once the law takes effect, existing death sentences would be commuted to life imprisonment.
More than 1,200 death-row convicts, including at least 11 Al-Qaeda-linked militants, stand to benefit from the capital punishment’s removal, according to the Free Legal Assistance Group, an organization that provides free legal counsel to death row inmates.
Anti-crime advocates immediately condemned the decision and announced they would hold a protest on Tuesday. “This government is siding with criminals and not the victims,” said Dante Jimenez, leader of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, a prominent group of relatives of hundreds of victims of crime.
“Now, some victims of heinous crimes may resort to hired killers to get justice,” he warned.
“It looks like criminals will celebrate tonight,” said Rep. Antonio Cuenco of Cebu, one of those who voted against the abolition of death penalty.
Jimenez suspected Arroyo’s government was rushing to abolish the death penalty in an effort to please Pope Benedict XVI, whom she is expected to meet in a visit to the Vatican later this month.
Arroyo and other presidents before her had been under continued pressure from Roman Catholic Church leaders and human rights advocates to dump capital punishment.
Arroyo, who opposes capital punishment, said the death penalty’s abolition would not be a victory for criminals and pledged to continue cracking down on criminals. “Make no mistake about it, the abolition of the death penalty will be complemented by a stricter and sterner enforcement of the law in all fronts,” she said.
The 1987 Constitution abolished the death penalty, which dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ government used to execute about a dozen people convicted of rape and drug charges.
Congress, however, restored the death penalty in late 1993 for heinous crimes such as murder, child rape and kidnapping.
Opponents of the capital punishment say the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent to crimes is fallacious.
“Death penalty has no place in any country,” said Rep. Edcel Lagman, the deputy majority leader at the House of Representatives, citing the absence of any scientific proof that capital punishment has deterred criminals in the country.
Lagman backed the death penalty’s abolition despite the death of his brother — a prominent left-wing labor leader who was gunned down at a university campus in suburban Quezon City in 2001.
Seven people convicted of rape and robbery with killings had been executed under the current death penalty law.
In 2000, former President Joseph Estrada ordered a moratorium on judicial executions, amid strong lobbying by the Catholic church, the European Union as well as local and international human rights groups.
During Marcos’ time, death row convicts were executed mostly by electric chair. But the country’s only electric chair facility was destroyed by lightning, prompting lawmakers to approve legislation prescribing lethal injection as the mode of execution.
“We are now consigning the lethal injection chamber to the museum, where it rightfully belongs,” Lagman said.
The debate over the death penalty has divided many Filipinos. Advocates of capital punishment say it would deter crime by threatening would-be offenders.
Opponents led by Catholic church leaders say there is no proof of that deterrence, adding there is a high probability an innocent man could be sent to death because of widespread corruption among law enforcers and in the judiciary. (With reports from Agencies)
