Activity 2: The Justice System

“Statistically, and sociological studies would show... that there is no direct correlation between
criminality, including drug cases, and the death penalty,” Cayosa said.

And with the “imperfect justice system” the country has, the poor would stand to suffer the most.
Although the state is duty-bound to provide legal counsel to accused who cannot afford their
own lawyers, Public Attorney's Office lawyers handle multiple cases and it would be impossible
for them to give the same attention as a private lawyer hired by a wealthy defendant.

Cayosa said that data from the Supreme Court itself showed that “a vast majority of those
convicted belong to the poor”  

Of convictions sentenced to the  death penalty, 71.77% were later  reversed by the high court,
he also said.

The IBP president noted that death penalty cases are automatically reviewed by the SC—and
this takes five to 15 years to resolve, he added.
Diokno said that data from the PNP showed that crime volume went down when the death
penalty was abolished. In contrast, he said, “crime volume, for rape in particular, went up” when
the Philippines executed convicts from 1998 to 2002.

A FLAG survey in 2004 also showed that 73% of death row inmates were poor and were
illiterate or did not receive much education. Eighty-one percent of convicts had low-income jobs
before they were arrested, prosecuted and sentenced.

FLAG estimates that those facing cases punishable by death would also need at least P300,000
to mount a legal defense.

“Definitely that is way beyond the means of many of those who were charged and later
convicted,” Diokno also said.

NUPL chairman Neri Colmenares added that the crime rate fell from 2010 to 2012 and then
increased in 2013 but there was no death penalty in the country during these periods.

The Philippine National Police also said that in 2017, crime rate went down by 9.13% despite
the state not executing its convicts at the time.

Colmenares, also a former lawmaker, stressed that if statistics and studies show that the death
penalty is not a deterrent to crime, “why continue to push through with it?”

“We are going to send people to their deaths, the least that we can do is prove that their deaths
[serves some purpose],” Colmenares added.

Diokno stressed that it is “the certainty of being caught and punished that deters crime and not
the severity of the punishment.”

“The only real and lasting solution to criminality is to strengthen the justice system. No amount
of death penalty laws will work without that,” he also said.

Cayosa also noted that the justice system in the Philippines is slow at times, and even
sometimes corrupt.

“No amount of penalty will deter and scare our people or much more hardened criminals or
syndicates if they know they can go around our policemen, fiscals, judges and even the
warden,” he also said.