IMPOSING DEATH PENALTY IN PHILIPPINES

Death penalty 1st established way back to 18 century B.C. in the code of king

Hammurabi of Babylon. It can be traced back in the time of Pre- Spanish in which Filipinos

already practicing it.

Today Death Penalty or the Capital Punishment is one of the most controversial and

debatable issue in the criminal justice system, where Filipinos argue whether it is

practical, necessary and beneficial if re- established or not. Death penalty is a

government- sanctioned practice whereby a person is killed by the state as a punishment

for committing capital crimes or offences. A punishment of execution, administered to

someone legally convicted. It aims to execute person who are committed to as a suspect

of killing and rape which is against human rights but the penalty, death penalty, as well is

against human rights.

Death penalty shows justice. A serious crimes must punish a serious penalty which is

death, “an eye for an eye”. Justice can dignify a person and there will be justice when we

punish the guilty. If we punish the criminal/guilty through death it would be better because

people will think and will hesitate to do a crime. According to Bedau H. (1982), most

people have a natural fear of death— it’s a trait in which we think about what will happen

before we act. This means that the homicide/crime rate would be very low because no

one like to die. Therefore, death penalty should re- impose to reduce crimes and save the

lives of thousands of potential victims who are at stake or in danger.

I don’t believe that sentencing criminals to death penalty gives and shows justice

because the law itself is an evil doing and doesn’t dignify a person. It also violates the

most fundamental rights of human—the right to life, which means all of us, criminals or
not, have the rights to live in this world as long as we could. And according to amnesty’s

research, many families who have lost loved ones have said that death penalty cannot

genuinely ease their suffering. It just extends that suffering to the family of the condemned

person. The victims have the rights to seek for answers as well as justice but not in the

way that they will go beyond death penalty because if they do, they don’t want justice but

revenge. If they want justice then it is enough for them to see the guilty suffering and

paying his/her mistake inside the prison. Death penalty is not the answer to show justice,

it was just a form of revenge and discrimination. “The answer lies in reducing violence,

not causing more death”— Marie Deans.

Death penalty doesn’t reduces and prevents crimes. In fact death penalty is also a crime

because you are judging and putting an end to someone’s life which is wrong, killing

someone is a criminal doing. A 2012 report of the National Research Council shows

numerous studies regarding death penalty and they concluded that there is no credible

evidences that it reduces crime rates. And based on my research, countries with death

penalty have higher crime rates specifically murder rates than countries with no execution

of death penalty. Like for example; in Canada, the murder rate in the year 2008 was less

than haft that in the 1976 when the death penalty was abolished there. So I think life

imprisonment is much better than death penalty because we can’t deny that there’s some

instances that we can mistakenly accuse someone who’s innocent but you can do

nothing, the damaged have been done.

Death penalty is not a solution to reduce or prevent crime rates. Death penalty just

shows revenge, discrimination, and an evil doing. Therefore, we must abolished death

penalty and go for life imprisonment as a punishment for those people who committed
serious crimes. In this case, we will not get our hands dirty and will not violate any law,

and the condemned person will have the chance to live and change into a much better

version of himself/herself. And remember to put this in your mind, revenge is not the

answer to any form of violence, “the answer lies in reducing violence, not causing more

death”— Marie Deans of US whose mother in law was murdered in 1972.