Bringing back the death penalty was one of the major campaign promises of President Duterte. Now that he is President, and unless the Senate can stop the passage, it seems Congress will indeed be able to get it passed for the President’s signature.
While the country is occupied with other issues such as the drug war and the Marcos burial, the House was able to do its work without any difficulty. It is surprising that this effort by the administration to bring back the death penalty has not generated the acrimonious debates that the issue has done in the past. Except for the cause-oriented groups, the church and some of the broadsheet papers, the public is almost indifferent to whether the law passes or not.
Perhaps the public is willing to simply allow the President to have his way. We will no longer return to that age-old debate on whether executing convicted criminals would in fact deter the commission of crimes.
As the principal proponent in the House said in an interview, criminals are getting bolder in committing despicable crimes and this must stop.
But will crime really stop with the reimposition of the death penalty? Governments starting from the small city states of antiquity to modern nation states have been executing criminals for the last 3,800 years. Crime has not stopped. Even with very harsh death penalty laws, crime continues to be committed. In the 4th century B.C, Draco of Athens instituted laws that punished all crimes by death, giving rise to the phrase Draconian measures. Still, this did not put a stop crime.
Today, many countries in the world still prescribe the death penalty to deter crime. China and Iran are the current leaders. These two countries execute more people that the rest of the world combined. In China, a person can be tried in the morning sentenced and executed in the afternoon. Thankfully, in the last couple of years, this practice was somehow stopped. Of the 195 member states of the United Nations, 56 countries retain the death penalty both in law and practice. Thirty countries have abolished it de facto by not executing any criminal in the past 10 years. Six countries have abolished it but with exceptions like crimes committed during wartime. The rest numbering 103 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
Some countries still practice public executions like North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. Some countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia also allow the execution of minors below 18 years old. Some countries execute people for sorcery and witchcraft like Saudi Arabia and the Central Africa Republic. Last year, 28 countries executed a combined total of 1,630 convicts which was the highest since 1989. Unfortunately, most of these executions happened in Asia with a total of 1,547. Africa executed about 55 and the United States put to death 28 convicts.
Most of Europe now has abolished the death penalty but not in the Unites States which incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the developed world. In this country, executing convicted criminals is like in many other things was of foreign origin when we were colonized by Spain. Some of our national heroes were executed, the most famous were the three priests in Cavite in the persons of Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora. Our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal was perhaps the most famous and the last to be executed by the Spaniards.
Records would show that as a country, we have not executed many convicted criminals. Even during martial law, only 12 were executed and before that, 19 were put to death. During the Estrada administration, seven were executed—the highest number in any administration.
The 1987 Constitution which was passed and ratified during the term of President Cory Aquino abolished the death penalty. This, however, was brought back in 1993 by virtue of Republic Act 765. This was again abolished in 2006 by the Arroyo administration making the Philippines one of only three countries that have abolished and reimposed the penalty.
Today, the Duterte administration wants it back. Whether the death penalty will stop the rise of crime is a question whose answer will never satisfy everyone. It is, however, important to bear in mind that the rise and fall of criminality is often cyclical and is also related to the kind of police that we have. If we have a professional and efficient police force, then criminality will not go up. But if we have a corrupt and inefficient police force, then crime will rise.
Even without the passage of the death penalty, about 5,900 people have already been killed in police and vigilante operations on account of the drug war. Yet people continue to peddle illegal drugs on our streets. One would think that with the number of people getting killed, that this would serve as a deterrent.
But no, the drug trade continues and before this war is over, a lot more people will die. Bringing back the death penalty has nothing to do with what is right or wrong. It all depends on the way leaders of a current government view crime fighting. Right now, we have a president who believes that imposing the death penalty will help in the war on crime. Since he carries with him a lot influence and political capital, the death penalty might very well find its way back into our statutes.
It will, however, be a costly victory in term of lives lost and the erosion in the professionalism and competence of our police.