Name: Cyrose Jimenez Grade&Section:11- HUMSS B

PHILIPPINE GOVERNMENT TO RESTATE DEATH PENALTY

FOR HEINOUS CRIMES

Will JUSTICE be truly served through Death Penalty?

The Philippines is one of 140 countries that have abolished the death penalty either in law or in
practice, as part of a global trend away from capital punishment Yet there have been repeated calls for the
Philippines to reinstate capital punishment, with current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte wanting to
restore it.

My stand on this is that death penalty is a sentence that should be abolished. Should we do to the
criminal as they did to the victim? Is there a chance that the accused is innocent? What can be done since
the sentence is irreversible? These are some of the issues with the death penalty.

My first issue is that the justice system is never 100% correct. “Judges and juries can convict the
innocent to jail for a murder he did not commit. And worst, a person may be sentenced DEATH. A death
penalty is irreversible and it alone imposes an irrevocable sentence. Once an inmate is executed, nothing
can be done to make amends if a mistake has been made.

Death penalty: Two sides of the Coin

It has been said that when someone takes a life, the balance of justice is disturbed. Unless that
balance is restored, society succumbs to a rule of violence. Some may think that only the taking of the
murderer's life restores the balance and allows society to show convincingly that murder is an intolerable
crime which will be punished in kind. Retribution has its basis in religious values, which have historically
maintained that it is proper to take an "eye for an eye" and a life for a life. Although the victim and the
victim's family cannot be restored to the status which preceded the murder, at least an execution brings
closure to the murderer's crime (and closure to the ordeal for the victim's family) and ensures that the
murderer will create no more victims. Many Filipinos think that for the most cruel and heinous crimes, the
ones for which the death penalty is applied, offenders deserve the worst punishment under our system of
law, and that is the death penalty. Any lesser punishment would undermine the value society places on
protecting lives.

Furthermore, there were claims that executions have a significant impact on reducing crime levels
and enhancing the security of law-abiding citizens have been proved false in other countries and are set to
be proved false in the Philippines. There is no evidence that the death penalty acts as a greater deterrent to
criminals than other forms of punishment. The killing by the Philippine state of prisoners convicted of
capital crimes will not provide a solution to the challenge of criminality-which will continue to be fuelled
by a complex of factors including poverty, social inequality, unemployment and the weakening of formal
and informal methods of social control.

The death penalty also carries a manifest risk of miscarriages of justice. No criminal justice system
in the world is immune from errors and that of the Philippines is no exception. A single error that
culminates, irrevocably, in the execution of an innocent person would represent a shocking failure of
justice-in effect, a judicial murder.

The risk of judicial error is sharply increased if torture or ill-treatment of criminal suspects is used
to extract confessions. Such grave violations of human rights are prohibited by the Philippine Constitution
and by the key international human rights treaties to which the Philippines is a party. In April 1997 an
Amnesty International delegation visited the Philippines and gathered testimonies of some of those
prisoners awaiting execution. The interviews conducted revealed allegations of illegal methods used by law
enforcement officers to extract confessions-including ill-treatment and torture. The allegations of the death
row prisoners were consistent with patterns and types of torture and ill-treatment by police reported by
other criminal suspects and prisoners.

Ultimately, I strongly believe that DEATH PENALTY is just another word for revenge. Although
our first instinct may be to inflict immediate pain on someone who wrongs us, the standards of a mature
society demand a more measured response. The emotional impulse for revenge is not a sufficient
justification for invoking a system of capital punishment, with all its accompanying problems and risks.
Our laws and criminal justice system should lead us to higher principles that demonstrate a complete respect
for life, even the life of a murderer. Encouraging our basest motives of revenge, which ends in another
killing, extends the chain of violence. Allowing executions sanctions killing as a form of 'pay-back.' Many
victims' families denounce the use of the death penalty. Using an execution to try to right the wrong of their
loss is an affront to them and only causes more pain. Vengeance is a strong and natural emotion. But it has
no place in our justice system." The notion of an eye for an eye, or a life for a life, is a simplistic one which
our society has never endorsed. We do not allow torturing the torturer, or raping the rapist.

Death Penalty: My Final Judgement

The death penalty is unjust and morally wrong. When someone murders someone else, the correct
punishment is not to murder him or her, but to try and help them. We don’t steal from the thieves, or rape
the rapists. “It would be degrading to the penal authorities. It would appear to condone the crime by
repeating it. It would be a wanton cruelty. Why do we murder the murderers? The death penalty takes focus
away from the victims and focuses the attention on the criminal.

These are just some of the reasons the death penalty should be removed. There are of course many
more. With the chance of being innocent, unjust, corrupt, what of the death penalty can be justified? I am
strongly against the death penalty and that’s what I firmly stand for.
 References
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Death penalty. (2017). LII. Retrived from: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/death_penalty
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