The 1987 Constitution promulgated during the Corazon Aquino administration 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.
In March 1996, the law was amended and prescribed death by lethal injection.
Between 1999 and 2000, during the term of President Joseph Estrada, seven inmates were executed as part of his 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 and three others convicted of killing a policeman were executed.
In June 2006, then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo abolished the death penalty. She said the measure had not proven to be a deterrent to crime and had become a dead-letter law. There were an estimated 1,200 inmates on death row at the time. —INQUIRER RESEARCH
Source: Inquirer Archives