Incoming House Speaker and Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez has filed a bill seeking to reimpose death penalty for heinous crimes by lethal injection.
Alvarez was joined by Capiz Rep. Fredenil Castro in filing House Bill No. 1 or “An Act Reimposing Death Penalty on Certain Heinous Crimes.”
“Criminal justice system has had to make do with penal laws that are perceived to be less than dissuasive. There is evidently a need to reinvigorate the war against criminality by revising a deterrent coupled by its consistent, persistent, and determined implementation,” Alvarez and Castro said in filing the first bill of the 17th Congress.
Included in the list of heinous crimes under the measure are plunder, trafficking in illegal drugs, carnapping, human trafficking, illegal recruitment, treason, parricide, infanticide, rape, qualified piracy and bribery, kidnapping and illegal detention, robbery with violence against or intimidation of persons, car theft, destructive arson, terrorism, and drug-related cases, among others.
“The imposition of the death penalty for heinous crimes and the mode of its implementation, both subjects of repealed laws, are crucial components of an effective dispensation of both reformative and retributive justice,” Alvarez and Castro pointed out.
Alvarez and Castro also sought to amend Republic Act No. 9344 or the “Juvenile Delinquency Act of 2006,” more popularly known as the Pangilinan Law to restore the minimum age of criminal responsibility at nine. The law raised the minimum age of criminal responsibility from nine to 15 years old. (CHARISSA M. LUCI)