MANILA, Philippines — A vice chair of the House justice committee has decided to swim against the tide of the majority by calling on his peers to focus on the coronavirus pandemic instead of reviving the death penalty.
Rizal Rep. Fidel Nograles on Sunday urged his colleagues to prioritize the fight against COVID-19, defying President Duterte’s call to Congress to restore capital punishment for drug-related crimes during his State of the Nation Address (Sona) in July.
The representative was quick to clarify that he remained supportive of the reimposition of the death penalty for serious offenses, but he said he believed that lawmakers should direct their energies toward the “most pressing issue” facing the country.
Flames of indignation
“It’s no secret that we support the death penalty for heinous crimes. But I think if we are going to talk about justice, let’s first talk of how to minimize the spread of COVID-19 in our jails,” Nograles said in a statement.
“We can talk about reinstating death penalty after we’ve had a desirable degree of control over the ongoing health crisis. Let’s not feed the flames of indignation of our people who think that our focus lies elsewhere than helping them survive,” he added.
The lawmaker earlier called on the government to release “low-risk and vulnerable” detainees to arrest the spread of COVID-19 in highly congested jails.
The Philippines has the highest jail occupancy in the world with a congestion rate at 534 percent, Nograles said.
“For now, let us focus our strength and intelligence toward saving lives. Even those who are in jails deserve to live,” he said.
‘Utter waste of time’
The Department of the Interior and Local Government earlier announced that close to 22,000 inmates had been released from the 470 facilities run by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, Nograles said.
He expressed hope that more would follow.
Also on Sunday, Buhay Rep. Lito Atienza, an opponent of capital punishment, urged the President to drop his push for the death penalty, calling it “an exercise in futility and an utter waste of time.”
“The President won’t get any satisfaction, even if his allies in Congress steamroll the passage of a new law reviving death sentences. The President still won’t see any judicial executions while he is in office, so he might as well give it up,” he said.
“Besides, the President’s wish to put convicts to death via a medically induced coma is no longer possible,” Atienza said, noting that sodium thiopental — the first of the three-drug concoction used to deprive convicts of life and brain function in lethal injection — was no longer legally available.
Humanitarian concerns
Atienza said production and trade of the powerful anesthetic previously used to render convicts unconscious had stopped because of humanitarian concerns.
He recalled that the Bureau of Corrections put seven convicts to death by lethal injection from 1999 to 2000, during then-President Joseph Estrada’s administration.
His successor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, declared a moratorium on executions, and Congress eventually abolished the death penalty in 2006.
During his fifth Sona on July 27, the President urged Congress to resuscitate the effort to restore capital punishment for drug crimes.
In March 2017, during the 17th Congress, under then-Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, the House passed on third reading a bill restoring the death penalty for major drug offenses, but it was stalled in the Senate.
While the 1987 Constitution states that the death penalty shall not be imposed, it says Congress may pass a law prescribing death for heinous crimes.