Senator Aquilino Q

Senator Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. pressed for the abolition of the death penalty on the ground that it defeated the intent of penal laws to reform criminals and did not deter people from committing crimes. The Senator said that the death penalty violated the constitutional mandate against cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. In seeking to repeal Senate Bill 2060, Pimentel proposed that those who committed heinous crimes be punished instead to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. "The death penalty ought to be repealed because it cannot reform the criminal. It does not qualify as a civilized way of achieving retributive justice. It is not deterrent to crimes," Pimentel said. Backed by 15 senators, the repeal of the death penalty was endorsed by the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights chaired by Senator Francis Pangilinan following more than two years of study. Pimentel argued that reforming the criminals could not be achieved by executing them but by imposing penalties other than death such as imprisonment. "For obvious reasons, a convict defeats the purpose of reformation or rehabilitation because a dead man clearly can no longer be reformed of rehabilitated," he said. The senator from Mindanao said the death penalty was anchored on the ancient Roman principle of "Lex Talines," the maxim that exacts an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth kind of justice. This principle, he said, had been discarded by many countries because it ran counter to the humanitarian thrust of modern penology.