ALMOST a year ago, Sen. Manny Pacquiao delivered an empathic privilege speech urging the Senate committee on justice and human rights to prioritize consideration of the death penalty bill.
On interpellation, Sen. Franklin Drilon noted that if enacted into law, the capital punishment would be imposed by judges, reviewable by Supreme Court justices. “These are men – although of great knowledge – as human beings, they can be fallible… can commit mistakes?” he asked Pacquiao.
Pacquiao agreed, saying that “no one is perfect.” He added that “the most important thing is we have to trust our authority, which is the government.”
“But all of us are fallible, we can commit mistakes,” Drilon pressed. “In fact, in the history of man, only one can claim infallibility, would the gentleman know that man?”
Pacquiao answered: “God, Mr. President.”
“And yet Jesus Christ was a victim of wrongful execution. Is that correct?” Drilon asked.
Pacquiao retorted that Jesus Christ sacrificed himself to save the lives of people.
“Are you saying the execution of Jesus Christ was a correct execution?” Drilon asked, going for the kill.
It was at this point that Senate President Vicente Sotto III had to chime in to defend Pacquiao. Sotto said, “Perhaps, what the gentleman means is that the redemption would not have been possible if Jesus did not die on the cross.”
Indeed, even learned judges can be prone to error in their judgments and their corresponding imposition of capital punishment against alleged perpetrators of heinous offenses.
In its July 2004 decision in People vs Mateo, the Supreme Court revealed that within the 11-year period since the re-imposition of the death penalty law in 1993 until June 2004, the trial courts imposed capital punishment in approximately 1,493 out of which 907 cases were subjected to review.
In the Supreme Court, where these cases find their way on automatic review, the penalty was affirmed in only 230 cases, or only 25.36 percent of the total number. In more than half or 64.61 percent of the cases, the Court observed, judgment was modified when remanded for further proceedings, by the application of the Indeterminate Sentence Law, or by a reduction of the sentence.
The death penalty was reduced to reclusion perpetua in 483 cases or 53.25 percent of the total number. A reversal or a judgment of acquittal was rendered in 65 cases.
Consequently, the cases where the judgment of death was either modified or vacated consist of an astounding 71.77 percent of the total of death penalty cases directly appealed to the Supreme Court. That translates to a total of 651 out of 907 convicts saved from lethal injection.
Discussion of the death penalty recently gained traction again when, in the midst of a rampaging pandemic, the President called for its re-imposition as a priority legislative measure in his state of the nation address.
Buoyed by the reboot, Pacquiao, who has three pending bills calling for the death penalty, exclaimed anew that being pro-death penalty does not conflict with his Christianity because it is God who established the government to determine penalties for criminals.
“Yes, I am a Christian. It is true that life is important but God has established the government or the authority to discipline those who are stubborn and those who commit sins,” Pacquiao said in a radio interview.
“As long as they believe what is written in the Bible, I think we can easily explain to them the legality of the re-imposition of the death penalty which is approved by God, the authority to impose punishment,” he added.
A complete juxtaposition of the death penalty from the Hebrew Scriptures to modern penal law would mean capital punishment for adultery, homosexual intercourse between men, witchcraft and divination.
In the book of Deuteronomy, we read that if a man marries a girl and claims that she is not a virgin, the parents of the girl are required to produce evidence of her virginity. If it is found that she was not a virgin, she would be stoned to death for engaging in fornication while still under her father’s authority.
Those archaic penal sanctions would be unconstitutional under our current legal order where cruel, degrading, excessive, and inhuman punishment is not allowed. This is the same legal order that, if we believe Senator Pacquiao, no less than God himself has authorized to subsist and decree as it is theocratically ordained.
The death penalty requires a perfect judicial system. There is no room for error. Such a system requires God himself as the supreme ruler.
Hasn’t Senator Pacquiao read Jesus himself saying: “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.”/PN
