Essay Topic:
Should the Philippines reinstate death penalty?


What is capital punishment? Capital punishment or in layman’s term death penalty is an execution of an offender to death after a conviction by a court of law of a criminal offense. Crimes that can result to death penalty are murder, treason, drug smuggling or other capital and heinous crimes. In some countries such as Saudi Arabia , homosexuality and apostasy are punishable by death.

Around the world, only 36 countries are actively practising capital punishment, while 103 countries had completely abolished the dreaded punishment. Some countries, including the Philippines, has suspended it indefinitely.

In the Philippines, heinous crimes that rocked the citizens to its core has resulted of renewed calls for the government to revive death penalty. But should the Philippines resurrect capital punishment?

In every perspectives, the death penalty should remain dead.

“Death Penalty deters people from doing heinous crime”

Proponents argue that capital punishment discourages people from committing heinous crimes.  

However, this is not entirely true. Statistics says otherwise.
There are several studies refuting the claim that capital punishment deters crime rates.

A study by Amnesty International in the United States found out that the murder in non-death penalty states is considerably lower than the states that implement capital punishment. In year 2011 alone, Alaska, a state that doesn’t impose capital punishment, has 29 case of murder which is 92% lower compared to the state of Arizona which has 405 case of murder.
Similarly, in a survey conducted by American Criminology Society among criminologists, 88 percent believed that the punishment of death penalty is not a deterrent to murder.
Experts also conclude that capital punishment does not discourage people from doing crimes. Jeffrey Fagan, a law professor at Columbia University, shared common voice. He said that there is no credible scientific evidence that hinders criminal behaviour. He continued that executions are only meant to satisfy one’s vengeance.

Even in the Philippines, capital punishment, before it was suspended, failed to stop the numbers of crime from rising.  During the administration of Estrada, crime rate from the year 1999 increased by 15.3 percent or a total of 82,538 from 71,527 crimes in the previous year.

“It shows that the justice system has no sympathy for the criminals.”

Timothy Evans was a Welshman accused of murdering his wife and his infant child at their residence. He was convicted and sentenced by hanging. Three years after his execution, he was exonerated by court as police found evidence that his neighbour, John Christie, a serial killer was responsible for the murder of his wife and child.

One of the arguments raised by supporters of capital punishment is that death penalty provides the justice to the innocent souls of their crimes. However, there are also several cases of miscarriage of justice. Miscarriage of justice happens when an innocent is convicted and punished for the crimes they did not commit.

A 2014 study conducted estimated that 4.1% of inmates awaiting execution on death row in the United States are innocent, and that at least 340 innocent people may have been executed since 1973.

With numbers given, capital punishment is fundamentally flawed and does not guarantee that it will provide actual justice instead it becomes injustice to the innocent persons sentenced to death. Reviving death penalty is bound to repeat tragic and haunting execution of Timothy Evans.

Even if death penalty is reinstated crime itself will not be prevented because there are varied reasons why people commit crime. Serial killers, for example, commits horrendous crime because of their “urge” or “motivation”. Meanwhile crimes of passion makes someone commit crime because of intense feeling or affection.

Scientific study and statistical data conducted by various people and organization has proven that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent against crime and the worst reality of capital punishment is miscarriage of justice.  Executing an innocent man to his death is haunting and declaring someone innocent after his execution still cannot bring back the life of an innocent soul and the justice brought to parties involved. Injustice is immeasurable.

End notes:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates

https://kimkarla.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/re-imposing-of-death-penalty-in-the-philippines-approve-or-disapprove/

http://www.ihra.net/death-penalty-project

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent

http://www.biography.com/people/groups/unnatural-death-executed

http://pcij.org/blog/2006/04/18/a-timeline-of-death-penalty-in-the-philippines

http://dokumentaryonijuantagalog.weebly.com/history-of-public-enemy.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wales/entries/cdc56160-91eb-366d-ae0e-5d9c5a676fe2

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-prisoners-on-death-row-are-wrongfully-convicted/

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/justice/841077/Death-penalty-Your-verdict-99-of-Sun-readers-from-our-poll-vote-in-favour-of-reintroducing-capital-punishment.html