Four months after the declaration of martial law in September 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos ordered the execution of notorious drug lord Lim Seng.
The Chinese businessman faced a firing squad at Fort Bonifacio directed by the strongman in an attempt to set an example that would serve as a deterrent against the growing drug menace.
There hasn’t been such execution and the problem persisted, and even worsened, in the country that has had a history of invoking and suspending capital punishment.
Between 1946 and 1965—the year Marcos became president—35 people were executed for crimes committed with “senseless depravity” or “extreme criminal perversity.”
The official justification for the death penalty as a deterrence to crime increased during Marcos’ time, and the worsening political and social tensions greatly influenced its application.
From 1971 to 1972, the Anti-Hijacking Law, the Dangerous Drugs Act and the Anti-Carnapping Law were passed. A series of Presidential Decrees were also issued which made subversion, illegal possession of firearms, arson, embezzlement and illegal fishing capital crimes.
The late President Corazon Aquino promulgated the 1987 Constitution which abolished the death penalty “unless for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes, Congress hereafter provides for it.”
In 1993, Congress passed Republic Act No. 7659 or the Death Penalty Law, which reimposed capital punishment.
In March 1996, through RA 8177, the law was amended prescribing death by lethal injection for those convicted of heinous crimes.
Between 1999 and 2000 during the term of the President Joseph Estrada, seven inmates were put to death as part of the Estrada administration’s anticrime drive.
The first and last to be executed were rapists Leo Echegaray, on Feb. 9, 1999, and Alex Bartolome, on Jan. 4, 2000. In between, two other rapists were also executed while the other three were sentenced to die for killing a rookie policeman in Caloocan City.
In June 2006, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed RA 9346 which abolished the death penalty. There were an estimated 1,200 inmates on death row at the time.
Arroyo said death penalty in the county should be abolished because it had not proven to be a deterrent to crime and had become a dead-letter law.
Days after signing RA 9346, Arroyo, in her visit to the Vatican, presented Pope Benedict XVI a copy of the law abolishing the death penalty. Ana Roa, Inquirer Research Source: Inquirer Archives