Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said while there is a law imposing the death penalty, the President — under the 1987 Constitution — has the prerogative to stay the executions if it is deemed necessary.
"That’s being done now because, at the beginning of the Arroyo administration, President (Arroyo) said that as much as possible, the death sentences would not be carried out so that’s why the President granted a reprieve," Ermita said.
He issued the statement even as some anti-crime groups protested the latest reprieve, saying it would only embolden criminals and criminal syndicates.
Ermita said that, despite the reprieve, the death convicts would still be undergoing punishment, since they have been imprisoned for a long time and isolated from society.
"We’re not saying we’re soft on criminals or tolerating crime — we are just saying that, under the Constitution, this is allowed and authorized depending on the policy of the leadership even if we have the death penalty," he said.
The President granted reprieves to 21 inmates of the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in Muntinlupa City Sunday.
In a one-page endorsement letter dated April 27, Ermita informed Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez that Malacañang had decided to move the inmates’ execution date from April 21 to later this year.
The President said in March that she would defer the execution of any death convicts "unless absolutely required by the times."
She said the deferment is justified by the successful efforts by the Philippine National Police (PNP) to curb kidnapping and drug trafficking, even without the government carrying out executions.
Official records show there are at least 1,005 inmates on death row at the NBP, many of them convicted for rape and kidnapping. Of the total, 165 death sentences have been affirmed by the Supreme Court and can only be stopped by a presidential stay of execution.
The death penalty was abolished in 1987, but reinstated in 1994 for "heinous" crimes such as rape, kidnapping, murder and drug trafficking. Before the 1987 abolition, executions were carried out using the electric chair. Now lethal injection is the method of execution.
Opposition to the reinstatement of capital punishment by human rights groups held up executions until 1999. Seven convicts were put to death by lethal injection, most for rape, in early 2000 until then President Joseph Estrada declared a moratorium on judicial executions amid pressure from the Catholic Church and human rights groups.
Mrs. Arroyo, a staunch Catholic, reversed the moratorium a month after the body of kidnapped Chinese-Filipino Coca-Cola executive Betti Chua Sy was found stuffed in a trash bag in Parañaque City in November 2003.
Independent statistics showed that Sy was the 156th kidnap victim in 2003, when abductions reached a 10-year high. — With Jess Diaz