Death Penalty: Floods of Blood Under Decayed Justice System
Vengeance cannot disguise as justice, and it is by no means the answer.
President Rodrigo Duterte, in his fifth State of the Nation Address, affirmed his openness to reimpose the death penalty, specifically in the method of lethal injection, for illegal drug-related crimes. Nevertheless, this will surely draw immense atrocity and inhumanity in the now-corrupted state.
Before the onset of this pandemic, many people were slaughtered in this regime’s hands — extrajudicial killings left and right. More so, when this virus is sparked, we continuously see numerous fatalities daily. Therefore, we should not take more lives through draconian state policy. This move will extremely drop the Philippines in the human rights violations abyss, thus breaching a wider hole in the judicial system.
Death Penalty Has No Deterrent Effect
Contrary to the belief of many, the death penalty does not deter crimes. People think that the death penalty’s imposition will spell restraint in the occurrence of heinous crimes and will put fear to the criminals. However, according to the National Statistics Office’s report on the Crime and Delinquency section of the year 1993–2004, there was no seen decrease in crimes even in the existence of capital punishment.
Moreover, 70% of the world’s countries have already abolished capital punishment for its inefficiency to curb crimes. States that execute the death penalty do not have lower crime rates than those that do not have such penology.
The Poor as the Victims
The death penalty is undoubtedly anti-poor. The upcoming protocol will also manifest the social division in our country. It will not be the perpetrators who will be the victims of this, but rather the marginalized sector. Furthermore, as Bryan Stevenson said:
“Our justice system treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent.”
Back in 2004, the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) surveyed 890 death row inmates. FLAG found that 79% of death row inmates did not reach college, and 63% were previously hired in blue-collar work. Furthermore, two-thirds of death row inmates are minimum-wage earners. These reflect the disparity that riches can afford to hire a good lawyer that will represent them in the court, and worst-case scenario, they can bribe the judge to conceal his/her offense.
Unethical and Inhumane Lethal Injections
Many people resort to thinking that capital punishment employing lethal injection is more humane than that of the electric chair and the guillotine. Lethal injection killings others think to be painless is a wrong presumption. This manner of killing causes racking pain. Lethal injection executions in the USA were botched. During the process, the prisoners were said to be catching their breath, chasing for air, and convulsing. Severe, foot-long chemical burns to the skin and needles were seen in soft tissues when the victims underwent autopsy.
The nature of killing is already inhumane. All forms of execution are inhumane. Not even this so-called ‘painless’ execution can conceal its looming wickedness, nor can it be used to answer the country’s social problem.
A Defiance to Human Rights
It is also ruthless since life is a constitutionally protected civil right. Capital punishment’s barbaric nature demeans human dignity and the sanctity of life. 1987 Constitution ratifies the dignity of every person and human rights. Additionally, it also denies the Declaration of Human Rights Article 3, which safeguards everyone’s right to life. The Philippines is also a signatory of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, which forbids the revert of the death penalty.
Imbalanced Wheel of Justice
Given the flawed justice system here in the Philippines, successfully enforcing the death penalty is merely insanity. The Philippines ranked 91st among the 128 countries in the Rule of Law Index by the World Justice Project because of uncountable injustices today. Such an unequal procedure of regulating justice infers the ambiguity of pushing through the said chastisement.
The Philippine Supreme Court on the 2004 decision acknowledged a 71.77% rate of judicial mistake in death penalty cases in local courts. Meaning to say, three out of four Filipinos subjected to it are innocents. If that persists, the lives of the innocents killed out of mishap cannot be back; it is irrevocable.
Death Penalty as an Act of Revenge
Executing someone for killing one another is revenge and never justice. One cannot punish a rapist by rape, nor can a murderer be punished by being subjected to murder. It is absurd to imply vindictive punishment as a solution because it will only engender a seeming increase in violence and deteriorate it.
The death penalty eyes to quell the heightening heinous crimes in the Philippines. Its barbaric kind of penology mirrors the harrowing inefficacy and brutality of the nation’s justice system. Death can never pay for what the criminals did to their victims. If the government is surely all for containing the country’s crime rates, incapacitation, or life imprisonment, eliminating the possibility of parole should be implemented. Opposing the death penalty does not equate to backing the purveyors of criminality. Vengeance cannot disguise as justice, and it is by no means the answer.
Carl Angelo Y. Cagatin is a campus journalist and a poet. At a young age, he already discovered the magic of literature. He started writing articles at the age of 11. To exercise his skills in writing, he joined various writing contests that sometimes bring him to the peak of triumph. Carl uses his pen as his voice to fight against tyranny because he believes that our pens are the keys to lose the fetters manacling us. In fact, most of his poems tackle today’s issues. Majority of his poems are written in Filipino, while his articles are in English. Aside from writing, he also loves to read English novels. For comments and suggestions: carlangelo@voxpopuliph.com.
