20 May 2006 :

the House Representatives began floor debates on the abolition of the death penalty in the country as contained in a bill certified as urgent by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In his sponsorship of House Bill 4826 known as “An act prohibiting the imposition of the death penalty in the Philippines,” Albay Representative Edcel Lagman cited the following reasons why capital punishment should be abolished: • It violates the ultimate right of a person to live.
• The death of a criminal in the hands of the State will diminish rather than uplift the human spirit.
• The death penalty is viewed as a “cruel, degrading, and inhuman” punishment.
• The enforcement of the death penalty did not comply with the law which requires the existence of “compelling reasons” to justify its imposition.
• It has not been proven that the death penalty will be a deterrent to crimes.  
Lagman pointed out that although the crime rate in the country was high between 1987 and 1994 when there was no death penalty, its restoration in 1994 did not stop the upsurge of criminal offences, particularly kidnapping, rape, and drug trafficking. The lawmaker cited statistics from the Philippine National Police, which showed that the number of murders in the country slid from 12,306 in 1987 to 6,446 in 1994 before the death penalty was re-imposed in the same year. When former president Joseph Estrada ordered a moratorium on executions, the 80,108 crimes committed in 2000 declined by 2,430.
“Clearly, the imposition of the death penalty does not necessarily decrease the crime rate while its abolition has resulted in a decrease in the rate of criminality,” he said. “It is most likely that what would deter the criminally-inclined is not the severity of the penalty but the swiftness of their apprehension, the speed of their prosecution, and the certainty of their conviction when their guilt is proved beyond reasonable doubt,” he said.
Lagman belittled the strong public support for capital punishment, saying this is only a product of “misinformation and lack of factual foundation.” He said if the general public would only be informed of the reality of the death penalty and the cruelty and inhumanity of its execution, many people would support its abolition.
“Nonetheless, the State should not be swayed by popular opinion. It must act for the benefit of all not just the majority. It is indeed distressing for a State to commit murder because the majority dictates it,” he said.