Incoming Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has said that the proposal to restore death penalty in the country will be a priority of the 17th Congress.
Alvarez has filed his House Bill No. 1 which seeks to re-impose death penalty on “heinous crimes”, such as human trafficking, illegal recruitment, plunder, treason, parricide, infanticide, rape, qualified piracy and bribery, kidnapping and illegal detention, robbery with violence against or intimidation of persons, car theft, destructive arson, terrorism and drug-related cases.
“There is evidently a need to reinvigorate the war against criminality by reviving a proven deterrent coupled by its consistent, persistent and determined implementation, and this need is as compelling and critical as any,” Alvarez said in his HB No. 1.
“The imposition of the death penalty for heinous crimes and the mode of its implementation, both subjects of repealed laws, are crucial components of an effective dispensation of both reformative and retributive justice,” the bill stated.
Republic Act 7659 or the Death Penalty Law was abolished in 1986 during the term of Former President Corazon Aquino. It was restored by former President Fidel V. Ramos in 1993, and was suspended again in 2006 by then president and Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
President Rodrigo Duterte has said he would want the capital punishment by hanging reimposed. Duterte also vowed to carry out at least 50 executions a month to serve as a strong deterrent against criminality.
Alvarez lamented that the rise of criminality in the country has reached at an “alarming proportion” and so the government must do an “all-out offensive against all forms of felonious acts.”
Alvarez’s bill was co-authored by Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro which proposes death penalty by lethal injection.
“Our criminal justice system has been emasculated in no small measure by the non-deterrent nature of impossible penalties on the most depraved violations of human life, honor and dignity,” Alvarez pointed out.
“The basic tenets of equity and justice demand that our penal system be one not only of reformation but corresponding retribution,” Castro, for his part, said.
Earlier, Muntinlupa Rep. Rufino Biazon filed a similar measure even as he expressed concern over the illegal drugs problem as well as the rising criminality in the country.
“Our own experience has shown that incarceration does not deter one who is convicted of drug trafficking from committing the same crime. There have been instances where the convicted trafficker continues to deal in the illegal drug trade even behind bars,” he added.
Biazon stressed that it is provided in the 1987 Constitution on death penalty “under certain circumstances and based on the current wisdom of the times.”
“This is to put back into the consciousness of those involved in the illegal drugs trade that the ultimate punishment of death awaits them should they continue with their nefarious acts,” Biazon said.
