A bicameral conference committee hammering out the...

A bicameral conference committee hammering out the final version of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 has approved the proposal of opposition Senator Teresa Aquino Oreta to spare from the death penalty minors who are found guilty of drug-related offenses.
Oreta pushed at the bicameral-panel level-and won approval of-her amendment excluding minors from capital punishment after learning that the Senate had modified her original proposal and did not completely exclude child offenders from the death penalty under Senate Bill 1858 or the proposed Dangerous Drugs Act. "This amendment to SB 1858 completely spares children aged 15 years and below from capital punishment," said Oreta.
Besides working to spare minors from capital punishment, Oreta also urged her colleagues to give priority to the passage of SB 2060 abolishing the death penalty. Oreta said the Congress should scrap capital punishment on heinous crimes in favor of life imprisonment or 30 years in jail without parole considering that the death penalty has failed in its fundamental purpose of deterring crime and has thus far only been imposed mostly on poor litigants with no means to competently defend themselves in court.