Transcript of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago ’s interview

As a former RTC judge of Quezon City, I oppose the move to restore the death penalty. When I was RTC judge and handling cases punishable by death, during the course of the trial I noticed that when the accused was threatened with the death penalty, there was no obvious terror or deterrent effect on the face of the accused. Apparently, criminals who go to the extent of murdering people are not deterred by the death penalty. This is not to underestimate the heinousness of the crime, but there are remedies.

The abolition of the death penalty was a matter of criminal law philosophy that it is better to rehabilitate the accused than to kill him outright. Number two, we will be going against the global mainstream if we restore the death penalty because it has been condemned, meaning to say that it has been vigorously sought to be abolished not only by the churches, but also by the United Nations and the European Union. So that would be a step backward.

Normally, the arguments in favor of the death penalty are that the penalty should be commensurate to the crime. However, the problem there is not whether by taking their lives we would restore the lives of those they took. The answer of course is no, those lives have been lost. If we punish with the approach of an eye for an eye, a death for a death, then we are starting a vicious cycle.

Plus, in this case, we would be violating the right to life, which already has been constitutionalized in our country. You will say “What about the right to life of their victims?” You will be correct. However, the question here is what is the best penalty for society as a whole. It may be that the families themselves may not even wish for the death penalty, they’ll simply wish for appropriate punishment. Sometimes, considering the miserable conditions of our jails, life imprisonment can be more proportionate as punishment than death itself.

Today we are very moved, and we sympathize and understand the grief of the families of the victims. But suppose after a month unearths documents to show that people who have been meted out the death penalty were innocent of the crime. Do we again agitate for the abolition of the death penalty? So, in other words, our attitude should not reflect what is happening in society, instead reflect a calmer, more objective view of the issue.

Death is not the answer to death. The answer to death is life. You can never tell which one of the rehabilitated and become a useful member of society. This does not mean that everybody is free to commit murder. In fact, the solution there is to make sure that for the families of the aggrieved that police and NBI enforcement should be stepped up because justice delayed is justice denied. The faster we identify the perpetrators, and the faster that the court sends them to jail, then, maybe, the better we can reduce the degree of grief of their families.

I don’t think that it would be a proper reflection on the sobriety and scholarship of the Senate if we pass a bill just about in the prior congress, and then backtrack. We cannot change our minds every two years. It would not say very much about our consistency or our grasp of the issues involved.