Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo reaffirmed her opposition to reimposing the death penalty in the country during a forum sponsored by the Catholic bishops’ conference last week.
“What are the data. When the death penalty was reimposed many years ago, did the crime rate go down? Did the number of people committing crime go down? No. It even went up,” said the vice president.
Robredo, a former human rights lawyer, said data from around the world show that reimposing the death penalty will not lower crime rates considerably.
“Studies show that the gravity of the penalty is not a deterrent of crime, but the certainty of punishment,” she said in Filipino.
“The certainty that you will be punished. So having said that, we need to organize our judicial system,” added the vice president.
Robredo said the judicial system has many flaws, affecting the poor and the marginalized.
“When I was a lawyer for the poor, I felt the justice is really out of reach of the poor,” Robredo said.
“If there’s death penalty, the chance that more poor people will be punished with death is big because they have no access to justice,” she said.
At the forum, Robredo stressed the need for judicial reforms by first seeing to it that the budget would be sufficient to have more lawyers at the Public Attorney’s Office and to entice “the best and the brightest” to join the roster.
Drawing from her experience, Robredo said they were overwhelmed with so many cases because they were undermanned.
This should not be the case if we want to achieve a justice system that is swift, efficient, and available to all, she said.
She also emphasized the importance of educating the public about their rights under the law so they can still defend themselves even in the absence of lawyers.
Lastly, she said that the appointment of judges and prosecutors is also vital in achieving the reforms in the judiciary that the country needs.
On June 24, 2006, the Philippines abolished capital punishment.
Months before the passage of the law that ended the imposition of death penalty, former president Gloria Arroyo issued a moratorium on carrying out capital punishment.
In April 2006, the Philippines commuted the sentences of some 1,230 death row inmates to life imprisonment – the largest ever commutation of death sentences, according to Amnesty International.
In his State of the Nation Address in July 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte asked Congress to pass a bill that will reinstate the death penalty by lethal injection for drug-related crimes.
