THE House of Representatives on Wednesday began its deliberations on the proposed measure seeking to revive death penalty in the country.
The sub-committee on judicial reforms, chaired by Leyte Rep. Vicente Veloso, tackled seven bills on death penalty, including House Bill 1 of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez. The House sub-committee on judicial reforms is under the House committee on justice.
Alvarez has filed his HB 1 which seeks to reimpose 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“The imposition of the death penalty for heinous crimes and the mode of its implementation, both subjects of repealed laws, are crucial components of an effective dispensation of both reformative and retributive justice,” the bill stated.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 wants capital punishment by hanging reimposed and even 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.”
At the sidelines of the hearing Tuesday, Velose said they will hear all sides of the issues before his panel’s approval of the measure.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, who was among the lawmakers who pushed for the abolition of death penalty in 2006, said the proposed revival of the death penalty as contained in Alvarez’s proposal was a “retrogression.”
“The abolition of the death penalty in 2005 under Republic Act 9346 was the culmination of a multi-year crusade which I spearheaded. Its proposed re-imposition is a patent affront to human rights and an abandonment of modern penology’s focus on rehabilitation of the convict, not the exaction of retribution,” Lagman said.
“The revival of capital punishment even for heinous crimes is an anachronism and execution by hanging is inordinately aggravating,” he added.