House starts debate on death penalty bill

Bed with thick straps used to hold down a death row prisoner inside the Lethal Injection Chamber in New Bilibid Prison, Muntinlupa City. Convicted rapist Alex Bartolome was the last person to be executed in this manner in the Philippines on January 6, 2000. 
INQUIRER PHOTO/LYN RILLON

The House of Representatives sub-committee on judicial reforms on Wednesday tackled the bill on death penalty amid the administration’s push to revive capital punishment as a deterrent to crime.

The subcommittee under the House justice committee tackled the seven bills restoring death penalty, including the principal bill filed by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez under House Bill 1, which seeks to repeal the law abolishing death penalty.

READ: Digong to lead Congress to restore death penalty

Subcommittee chairperson Leyte Rep. Vicente “Ching” Veloso, a former Court of Appeals justice, in an interview said he personally supported the restoration of death penalty as an effective deterrent to crime.

Veloso however denied that Alvarez gave the marching orders for the committee to railroad the bill.

Alvarez earlier vowed that the restoration of death penalty would be approved before the December break.

READ: House to approve death penalty bill before Christmas break 

Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption President Dante Jimenez maintained that previous administrations only failed to ensure that death penalty is a deterrent to crime.

“The argument that it is not a deterrent to crime is misleading. The factor of death penalty is clear in history, even martial years and during Marcos years, and in drug trafficking due to capital punishment, when drug lords are publicly executed, sending a chilling signal to hardened criminals and offenders to keep off from illegal activities,” Jimenez said.

But Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, who was among the lawmakers who pushed for the abolition of death penalty in 2006, became irked when Jimenez gave an unresponsive answer to a question.

When Lagman asked Jimenez if he knows that death penalty has been in place since the dawn of civilization, Jimenez answered: “I don’t know, I was born in 1952.”

“I will not further question this witness for that kind of answer,” Lagman said.

After being reprimanded by the committee, Jimenez said he was only answering candidly the question of Lagman.

He appealed that the committee understand his position on death penalty, citing the death of his brother by drug syndicates in 1990 supposedly due to mistaken identity.

“If I offended the congressman, I’m sorry, and I hope you will understand my position here,” Jimenez said.

The committee called for an adjournment after Lagman gave a silent treatment to Jimenez.

“I only understand the position of resource person if he answers responsively,” Lagman said, before the hearing adjourned until next week Tuesday.

It was Speaker Alvarez who first filed the bill seeking to reimpose death penalty after former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo abolished capital punishment in 2006 for its failure to deter crime.

Alvarez filed the bill to reinstate death penalty, pursuant to President Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign promise of returning capital punishment against heinous criminals.

 READ: First bill in Congress seeks reinstatement of death penalty

Alvarez’s bill sought to reimpose death penalty on heinous crimes listed under Republic Act 7659, including murder, plunder, rape, kidnapping and serious illegal detention, sale, use and possession of illegal drugs, carnapping with homicide, among others.

In the bill he co-authored with deputy speaker Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro, Alvarez said there is a need to reimpose death penalty because “the national crime rate has grown to such alarming proportions requiring an all-out offensive against all forms of felonious acts.”

“Philippine society is left with no option but to deal with certain grievous offenders in a manner commensurate to the gravity, perversity, atrociousness and repugnance of their crimes,” according to the bill.

READ: ‘Death penalty back in one year’

Duterte had won the elections in a campaign promise to restore death penalty by hanging, even making a snide remark that the convicts’ head should be severed from the hanging. Alvarez said Congress would look into the cheapest way for death penalty, either by firing squad, lethal injection, or by hanging. JE

READ: Death penalty: ‘The cheaper, the better’