Rovic Saberon Payot

II-B.S. in Legal Management

Position Paper No. 0001

Re: Proposed Legalization of Death Penalty series of 2021

A Position Issued on
November 20, 2021

I dissent.

For how can the human race deprive something it does not own? How dare those
who were dressed with power dispose lives that aren’t theirs? Aren’t the laws meant
to correct a wrongdoing?

Thus, how can one correct his should he be sentenced to death?

The radical and dramatic reduction of crime rate in a country was cited as, at the
very least, the most convincing rationale of those who believed the vicious power of
legal death penalty. Setting aside their paralleled ideology, these people, indeed,
possessed that faith towards the stunning societal advantage and aftermaths
brought by lethal injection, silya electrika, and other methods of killing as punishment
for crimes. Free from any whisper of doubt, crime rate of the country in the Erap
administration, the time when death penalty was re-promulgated, had experienced
convincing reduction which was, somehow, considered as legacy of such leadership.

On the other hand, one could be impressed with the political stand of those who rally
their opposition on this matter. Religious sector, human rights activists, and those
who viewed life as too important to be the exchange of the crime committed, went
out of silence to be heard by the state. The Catholic Church, holding the most
amplified voice with regards to death penalty, anchored their contrary position on
their sectarian teachings and to the bible. They assert that ever in the history,
mankind was never vested with either special or ordinary authority to send life back
to who created it.

Having all the positions above and considering the nobleness of each position’s
rationale, I reserve my objection to the legalization of death penalty. Statistically, the
promising effect of such penalty to the crime rate is unquestionably true, sudden
decrease of crime incidents was recorded indeed. But attaining this in the expense of
human life had appeared, for this writer, to be a blatant disrespect to the very life that
we enjoy. No question to the aim of the society to have low crime rate which no state
would refuse to have that, but I humbly submit that human mind is too
comprehensive to just resort on killing the criminals to pose the fact to people that
our penal system is working. Our government may focus on empowering the law
enforcement agency and killing corruption casting on this agency.
Our laws are meant to be an instrument of correction, and should never be of
destruction. A pillar of our criminal justice system is rehabilitation or correction.
Those who went from conflict with the laws, regardless of how the threat they’ve
imposed to national security, must be dressed with chances to change for we are
only humans after all. What they did must be corrected by rehabilitation programs
inside the prison. Our right must only be limited to this, our intention to reduce crime,
though very noble indeed, should not be carried out by burying out totally the life of
the convict. The parameter of our authority to impugn criminality must never ever
encompass the power that only God may possess for the latter is the only giver, thus
all pertinent right attached to its destruction must solely be vested to him.

In addition, death penalty must never become legal for our courts of justice are not
court of God, but of humans only. And history can attest the fact that human
decisions are always subject to error regardless of how accurate the evidences
purporting to it. Aside from the fact that humans are committing error amidst their
expertise to law, the doctrines and rules themselves are changing. What constitutes
a rape today maybe revised, amended and changed by new decisions someday,
these changes are too material that when applied to cases before, decision and
punishment appeared to should have been different. The doctrines, rules and factors
on how we decide a case today will surely be studied tomorrow or by the next
generation, but imagine having death penalty today and we use these doctrines to
decide whether or not the accused are still entitled to live. Surely, the future
generation will correct the doctrine, but how about the lives that were destructed by
these rules already before, can changing the rules bring back their lives? Logic will
side the contrary basically.

Time from today, we will be studied; our ways and means of running the government
will be analyzed by people of tomorrow. Death penalty must never have a room in
the government not because the teaching of Catholic Church says so, not because
we are a country with so much followers of such church, but because even without
the teachings of Catholics, we have the responsibility to preserve our race.
Combating crime for greater good is truly a noble vision, but those who went against
this vision must be given another chance to live and change. Regardless of how this
chance to change was deprived to us by our lovers, we must not deny it to everyone
as a matter of right. In the end, how we suppress criminality matters more than the
lowering of criminality rate, for there can be no peace in the country that legally and
viciously cut somebody’s God-given fate.

Therefore, I humbly object the legalization of death penalty as the capital

punishment of our country.

ROVIC SABERON PAYOT

Writer