THE PHILIPPINES. DEATH CONVICTS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR PAROLE, SAYS CONGRESS

convicts on death row will be spared lethal injection but will not be eligible for parole, a report of the bicameral conference committee said.
The Senate and the House of Representatives came out with a reconciled version of their respective bills less than 24 hours after each chamber abolished the death penalty in the Philippines.
The bicameral report stated that convicts sentenced to reclusion perpetua, or a prison term of up to 40 years, in lieu of the death penalty, will not be paroled.
The report was approved by both houses of Congress.
The House version was “silent” on whether those meted out life imprisonment (and those whose death sentences will be downgraded to life terms) were eligible for parole, while the Senate version downgraded the death penalty to reclusion perpetua or life imprisonment without parole.
“Persons convicted of offenses punished with reclusion perpetua, or whose sentences will be reduced to reclusion perpetua, by reason of this act, shall not be eligible for parole under Republic Act No. 4103, otherwise known as the Indeterminate Sentence Law, as amended,” the one-page draft law said.
However, the draft law also said “nothing herein shall limit the power of the President to grant executive clemency” under the Constitution.
Passage of the law would automatically commute the sentences of about 1,200 death row inmates in the Philippines.
While lauding the impending abolition of the death penalty and the President's role in it, a coalition of political and religious groups said the government should also put a stop to the extrajudicial killings of activists and journalists.
“There's an inconsistency on the government that it fights for the people's right to life by seeking the repeal of the death penalty law, while at the same time we are witness to extrajudicial killings,” Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez at the press conference.