LEGAL ASPECT OF DEATH PENALTY.
Penalty is the suffering inflicted by the state for the violation of a law.
Our 1987 Constitution in Section 9 (1) Article III of the Bill of Right provides: Excessive fines not be imposed, nor cruel, degrading or inhuman punishment inflicted. Neither shall the death penalty be imposed, unless, for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes, the Congress hereafter provides for it. Any death penalty already imposed shall be reduce to reclusion perpetua. (2) The employment of physical, psychology, or degrading punishment against any prisoner conditions shall be with by law.
Here, we shall emphasize a person's right against cruel, degrading, or inhuman punishments, which can only be invoked after conviction. (1) As to form: we can say that punishments are cruel and / or inhuman when they involve torture or lingering death, such as burning alive, mutilation, starvation, drowning, and other barbarous forms of punishment.
However, "death penalty" by hanging, electrocution, or musketry is not considered cruel within the meaning of that word as used in our Constitution. Nor it is inhuman. Destierro or banishment from a certain locality as punishment is neither cruel nor inhuman and so valid. Punishment if degrading when it brings shame and humiliation to the convict, or exposes him/her to contempt or ridicule, or lowers his dignity and self-respect as a human being. (2) As to quantity or duration: punishments greatly disproportionate to the nature of the offense as to be shocking to the human conscience would be both cruel and inhuman. This, life imprisonment or even death is not cruel nor inhuman when imposed for treason, parricide, murder and other heinous offences especially when aggravating circumstance attended their commission; but it is cruel and inhuman if imposed for petty crimes like slander or theft of small value. Punishment that is cruel, degrading, or inhuman is prohibited by our Constitution.
Section 19 merely suspended, not abolished, the death penalty. It should not be inflicted unless Congress decides to reinstate it for compelling reason, involving heinous crimes Philippines in which case it shall apply only to such crimes subsequently committed. Death penalty already imposed when the New Philippines Constitution took effect in 1987 was automatically communed to reclusion perpetua or life imprisonment.
HEINOUS CRIMES. The Philippines Constitutions does not define what "heinous crimes" are but they can be said to cover offense that are exceedingly or flagrantly bad or evil or those committed with extreme cruelty as to shock the general moral sense, such as treason, parricide, drug-trafficking, murder, robbery with homicide, killing a person in stages, etc., especially if the crimes is committed against children or defenseless people. Thus the death penalty has the following arguments:
1. It is not cruel and inhuman because the manner by which it is executed (by electrocution or by lethal injection) does not involve physical or mental pain nor unnecessary physical or mental suffering, and it is imposed only for heinous crimes;
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