AS THE House’s Committee on Justice hears proposed bills for capital punishment for drug-related offenses and heinous crimes, let us take a look at a study of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) in 2004 on the socioeconomic profile of capital offenders in the Philippines. It surveyed 1,121 death row inmates at that time (which comprises 87.17 percent of the total death row population).
The study emphasized the following points:
a. 61% of the death row inmates were agricultural workers, construction workers, transport workers and service workers
b. 65% of those surveyed were earning less than P20,000 per month, while 47% were receiving below minimum wage and were in absolute poverty levels
c. 58% of those surveyed had high school-level, elementary-level, or had no education
In a study published by Drug Archive Philippines, an online site of a research consortium led by Ateneo School of Government, De La Salle Philippines, University of the Philippines and Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, based on documentation from media reports of 5,021 cases of killings in the Duterte administration’s anti-drug campaign, most victims were low-paying and on low-skilled work. They were tricycle drivers, construction workers, street vendors, jeepney barkers or dispatchers, farmers, jeepney, habal-habal or pedicab drivers and garbage collectors. Some were also unemployed. Based on their place of residence or their occupation, it is clear that most of the victims were poor, the researchers stated.
We mentioned the government’s anti-drugs drive in the light of proposals on the reimposition of death penalty on offenses related to the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act. The fear that it will institutionalize and worsen killings made in the name of the much-criticized drug war is not unfounded.
Based on the FLAG study, death penalty disproportionately impacts on the poor sector row due to various economic and social drivers such as economic status, educational attainment, and even longstanding issues on access to justice, including access to a competent legal counsel and to a fair trial. The study also noted incompetent counsel, civil and political rights violations, and police irregularities such as warrantless arrests, not informing suspects of their constitutional rights, planting of evidence for extortion or as a means to compel to divulge information, and torture.
It is therefore myopic, simplistic and unfair to simply brand them as the “shame of the race,” “ignominy of a people,” “disgrace of human kind,” and therefore “should be erased from the face of society” as one death penalty bill author states.
