House unlikely to revive death penalty

MANILA, Philippines - Many members of the House of Representatives are not inclined to support the revival of the death penalty because flaws in the criminal justice system could lead to wrongful executions, Deputy Majority Leader Roman Romulo said yesterday.

“Our criminal justice system has many imperfections, and capital punishment leaves no room for rectification once a convict has been put to death. We can’t free the dead,” he said.

“The risk of wrongful convictions is unusually high because the pillars of our justice system, particularly the police and the courts, are severely handicapped,” he added.  

He noted that a person wrongfully convicted of life imprisonment could still be freed even after languishing in prison for years. There have been calls to reinstate the death penalty after the occurrence of two high-profile car theft and murders. Romulo said the rising cases of car theft can be suppressed by meting punishment swiftly.   

“Car thieves have become more aggressive because they are literally getting away with murder. The only sure way to suppress them is to put them all behind bars,” he said.           

“The certainty of swift punishment is our best deterrence to crime, more than the punishment itself.”      Romulo believes capital punishment should not be reinstated while the police force remains irresponsible and corrupt.             “We can’t have the death penalty if we still have highly irresponsible police officers brazenly torturing suspects, fabricating evidence and illegally snatching people on trumped up charges,” he said.    Romulo cited the case of police officers linked to the video recorded torture of a suspect, and the rape of a woman picked up on false charges inside a police district headquarters.

Camp Crame has acknowledged that many police officers are also inept in basic criminal investigation skills. Congress reinstated the death penalty for 13 heinous crimes in 1993, only to abolish it in 2006.

That year, then Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban admitted that a “judicial error” had caused the mistaken execution of incestuous rape convict Leo Echegaray in 1999.         

Panganiban said it was proven during trial that Echegaray was not “a father, stepfather or grandfather” of the victim. (isama na ito lahat)