Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr

Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. (PDP) urged the Philippine Congress to decide on the proposal to abolish the death penalty in the light of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's reaffirmation of government policy to observe a moratorium on capital executions. Pimentel said the President's stand on the issue made during her audience with Pope John Paul II last should help break the prolonged stalemate in Congress over the bill to repeal the death penalty law (Republic Act 7659). "The President's stand on the issue is a clear manifestation of state policy based on moral and legal principles and in recognition of the need for a more humane and enlightened approach to penology that gives convicted offenders a chance to reform and become productive and law-abiding members of society anew," the opposition lawmaker said. Once the death penalty law is repealed, he said, convicted offenders would be punished with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment without option of being pardoned. Current death row inmates would have their death sentence automatically commuted to life imprisonment. Pimentel warned that the President's practice of granting reprieves to death row convicts after their death sentences had been upheld by the Supreme Court, created a legal aberration whereby the judiciary met out death sentences to crime offenders without certainty that they would be carried out. Despite the fact that the bill repealing the death penalty had been endorsed by 15 senators and by the Senate committee on justice and human rights, Pimentel said the landmark bill was still stuck in the legislative mill because of the vigorous objections of pro-death senators. He said that some Senators, in a bid to break the impasse, had proposed a compromise by shortening the list of heinous crimes punishable by death instead of an outright repeal of the death penalty law. Based on the compromise proposal, the death penalty would be limited to murder, rape, big-time drug trafficking, kidnapping-for-ransom and other heinous crimes that are rampant in the country.