‘Lethal injection chamber may soon be a thing of the past’

With the wholesale commutation of the sentences of inmates languishing on Death Row, the lethal injection chamber might just become a thing of the past — at least under the present administration, Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director Vicente Vinarao said yesterday.

"In that case, the lethal injection chamber, though not to be used anymore, should be regarded as a historical spot inside the National Bilibid Prisons. It should just be referred to as a mode of execution, once used in punishing death convicts," Vinarao said.

The lethal injection chamber was established in 1995 under Vinarao’s administration.

Vinarao himself had proposed lethal injection as a more humane alternative to the electric chair.

"It is a very gruesome manner to end the life of inmates on Death Row. On the other hand, lethal injection is seen as a more humane way of executing death convicts," Vinarao said.

He added the electric chair is costly and expensive to maintain compared to the preparations for a lethal injection.

An electric chair, Vinarao pointed out, costs around P7 million while lethal injection can be administered for only few thousand pesos.

"It would also take some time to import an electric chair once the equipment gets old and defective," Vinarao said.

Even with the declaration made by President Arroyo foregoing further executions, the government is not about to do away with phlebotomists — the workers tasked to administer lethal injections.

Budget and Management Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. said he is not likely to recommend the dismissal of phlebotomists from the government’s 1.2 million workforce.

"There’s no need to scrap these items at this time," Andaya said.

"The order of the President calls only for a moratorium on the death penalty," he said.

Unless there is a repeal of the death penalty law, the phlebotomists will keep their jobs, Andaya said.

There are currently four phlebotomists on the government payroll.

A senior phlebotomist, at salary grade 20, gets an annual salary of P213,538 or P17,799 per month.

The others at salary grade 18 receive P190,092 annual remuneration, or a monthly salary of P15,841.

Andaya assured that if the death penalty law is abolished by Congress, these government phlebotomists could theoretically be assigned to other jobs in the correctional system.

"With their medical background, they can apply their skills to any related tasks in the correctional system," Andaya said. "Instead of dealing with death, they can prolong or improve life."

Phlebotomists are medically trained to administer hypodermic needles but not necessarily lethal injections.  

A phlebotomist is defined as an individual trained to draw blood (venipuncture), either for laboratory tests, or for blood donations.

In blood donations, a phlebotomist is tasked to draw the blood, perform a test to determine if the donor is anemic, such as a finger prick hemoglobin test, and may also help in the recovery of patients with adverse reactions.

After the courts set the date of the country’s first execution in 22 years for January 1999, the government had to rush to train people, some reportedly medical technologists, on how to administer lethal injections.

A mistake in the administration of the lethal injection could cause a painful death or a premature execution of the convict.

Their identities, however, are still kept secret by the government.

A total of nine death convicts in the Philippines have been executed by lethal injection.

The first was Leo Echegaray, a 38-year-old house painter condemned to die by lethal injection for raping a minor in 1994.

The death sentence on him was carried out on Jan. 4, 1999. His final words were "Filipinos, forgive me for the sins they accuse me of."

Then President Joseph Estrada said Echegaray’s execution would serve as a warning to other criminals.

Estrada led the move to bring back capital punishment as a deterrent to violent crime.