The role of criminal punishment in the modern world is ideally one that provides an

avenue for reform while simultaneously preventing the repeat offense of a certain

violation of the law. This is why common contemporary consequences of the law involve

a prison sentence or community service. In the past, punishment had served as a show

of a sovereign’s power over its enemies, the vast majority of which were tortured or

executed as some means of vengeance (Foucault 2-9). Mostly, time has seen

punishment evolve into a less permanent sentence for dysfunctional members of

society, and has been justified conventionally to reinforce the prevention of crimes

(Foucault 93).

The concept of punishment has for the most part transcended from base retribution.

It is no longer founded on making a criminal offender meet a fate of the same intensity

as their crimes, as executions often were. In some systems across the world, however,

the heavier judgment of the death penalty still persists. Contrary to the vision of the

modern sentence, the death penalty is hardly reformative; society cannot reform the

dead. Whether it serves as a deterrent to crimes is arguable, though the existence of

heinous crimes in societies with justice system that implements the death penalty is

enough to question its effectiveness in completely eliminating certain violations of the

law.

The purpose of the death penalty, therefore, is made questionable. Evidently, it is

still the manifestation of the self-preservation of ruling power in heavily totalitarian

systems; North Korea authorizes the execution of individuals for the contextually trivial

acts of political dissidence and the viewing of government-censored material. A question

not as easily answered is on the rationale of the death penalty’s existence in democratic
societies, where a government supposedly acts in the better judgment for the majority of

its constituents. If the laws of democracy reflect the ideology of a sovereign society,

then what does the presence of capital punishment infer about the collective thinking of

its people?

Capital punishment in the Philippines has a somewhat complicated history, having

been suspended twice since the declaration of the country’s independence. Among the

last to be sentenced to death before the second suspension of the death penalty in

2006 are the suspects of the Chiong murder case, eight (initially seven) men accused of

the rape and murder of Jacqueline and Marijoy Chiong. The case amassed controversy

following the initial verdict of a life sentence, with widespread criticism befalling the

failure to impose the death penalty (Suansing 17). The accused would eventually be

sentenced to death, though this and the fact that their sentence was later downgraded,

again, to a life sentence is for the most part irrelevant; the distinct accounts of those

with an opinion on the execution of the death penalty on the Chiong Seven are enough

to establish the prevalent mindsets of Philippine society in the final years of the second

millennium. This democracy, that champions the retributive justice offered by the death

penalty, is of a morally blind society, of an underdeveloped sense of empathy and a

warped structure of power.

The first highlighted opinion on the Chiong case was that of an Archbishop Ricardo

Vidal of Cebu, who praised the initial verdict placed on the accused, stating that they did

not deserve to die (Gonzalez and Ghea 120). This strain of opinion was evidently

unpopular, possibly even considered outrageous; then-president Erap Estrada, Justice

Secretary Serafin Cuevas, Executive Secretary Ronaldo Zamora, and Parañaque

Representative Roilo Golez, among others, held starkly opposing positions to that of the

Archbishop, the president himself even going so far as to directly condemn Judge

Martin Ocampo for not being the “first to implement the law (Gonzalez and Ghea 120).”

The spectrum for the purpose of criminal punishment is defined accurately in this

contrast, with one end holding the belief that a violator of the law deserves opportunities

to atone for his wrongdoings and possibly be allowed reform, and the other end

asserting the role of punishment as punishment; a warning to the bystander to keep

them well behaved, and a fearsome consequence to the offender with a goal to dismiss

any notions of recidivism.

However, the pro-deterrence of the likes of Estrada and his fellows and their

condemnation of judge Ocampo for his “shortcomings” are merely guises masking the

true purpose of campaigning the death penalty. Estrada commented how the weak

verdict would feed a social stigma: that the rich could escape the consequences of the

law; while Golez demanded the death penalty as a minimum, with no other reason

being that of the act of the crime itself (Gonzalez and Ghea 120). In other words, they

stand for a justice that communicates death as its standard for those they decided

deserved it. If we are to assume that a death sentence given out with the sole goal of

vengeance is morally and economically problematic, then we see a people whose

sense of justice may not only justify evil, but normalize it -- it is considered a moral or

social obligation to put to death someone who has killed, or has done something

similarly wicked.

Two days after, another article published under the Philippine Daily Inquirer

confirmed the fears of president Estrada: the public had been convinced that the lack of
an execution in the verdict of the Chiong murder case was proof that money and

influence could buy a man out of any consequences posed by the law (Palabrica 9).

Raul Palabrica, author of the article, wrote specifically against Francisco Larrañaga and

his fellow accused, nonchalantly expressing his belief that they deserved “no less than

four lethal injections” for their combined crimes (Palabrica 9). He argues how each

action the court took in favor of the accused, including offering them some benefit of the

doubt at the lack of concrete evidence, considering their ages, lack of education, and

poverty, was brought about the bias of a dysfunctional justice system “for the rich and

powerful (Palabrica 9).” Explicitly mocking judge Ocampo’s verdict of “justice tempered

with mercy,” Palabrica appeals to the emotion of his audience, reminding them that

Jacqueline and Marijoy were the victims of crime, and it is they who deserve mercy, not

the accused (Palabrica 9).

Again, the thinking body of the society represented by Palabrica places its interest

on the retribution provided by capital punishment. To achieve this, as Palabrica had, one

must first debunk every quality or characteristic of the criminal that has any potential of

garnering sympathy. By convention, a violator is made a mere sum of their crimes

before the eyes of justice -- no longer a part of society, and subsequently less than

human (Radelet 84). However, where Palabrica and the rest of 1990’s Philippine society

deviates in thinking is in the rationale of criminal punishment; Disregarding the overall

questionable conduct of the trial of the accused, Palabrica called for their deaths not to

make an example of them, or to prevent an inevitable repeat offense, but to “avenge”

their alleged victims. Ultimately, as it seems, the Filipino of this time would not hesitate
to put its victims on a pedestal, using them to demonize the condemned as to justify an

execution, reprisal arguably being its sole obligation.

A article on the Chiong case surfaced six years later, in stark contrast to the

opinions held by the headlines of Philippine periodicals in the late ‘90s. Palabrica,

before the Chiong Seven were sentenced to death, claimed that the justice system was

a tool for the rich and powerful; Vicente Mañalac, assistant regional state prosecutor,

concurred; but his position was that the life sentence ultimately given to the accused

was brought about the manipulation of evidence and court procedure by the powerful

and influential, implied to be the Chiongs themselves (Ocampo A29). Arguing that the

verdict was a “miscarriage of justice,” Mañalac details the exclusion of the valuable

testimony that could have been provided by Roy Codiñera, a former police investigator

among those that arrested Larrañaga, who claims his and the Uy brothers’ innocence

(Ocampo A29). Furthermore, Codiñera attested that the testimonies of the key witness

of the prosecution, Davidson Rusia, were false and molded to complement the

prosecution’s arguments (Ocampo A29).

The implication of capital punishment and criminal punishment in general as a tool

of a small power-centric group is not unfamiliar. Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish

extensively recounts the reestablishments of power structures in 17 th to 19th century

France, by examining several changes in the procedure of criminal punishment and the

nature of penal reforms. Of note, the “influence peddling” Mañalac claims is responsible

for the apparently unjust verdict bears comparison to the justice system of France in the

late eighteenth century; a justice system with rampant inner conflicts and unnecessary

political and economic interests, with trials sometimes even directly influenced by a
monarchial super-power’s ability to pardon crimes or commute sentences (Ocampo

A29, Foucault 78-82). Accepting information as it is presented, to look through

Foucault’s lens of analyzing power is to render Mañalac’s influence peddler as one in a

seat of power; convinced of the accused’s guilt, this influence peddler invokes

punishment on the condemned to take retribution and reestablish their position as a

super-power in society.

To reform murderers and rapists may be considered daunting to impossible, in

theory. It has been observed that a penal system that fits the description of a carceral

archipelago does not necessarily contribute to the deterrence of crime in a system

(Foucault 264-268). However, even this failure to cut down offense and recidivism

resulted in some benefit to society; and former convicts are mostly well-tracked and

supervised (Foucault 268-271). The idealism of criminal punishment is one that must

continually improve in method to form a convict’s humanity, and in effect, reintegrate

them into society. For a society to resign its efforts into pursuing this ideal and to

embrace retaliation in its stead is for a people to gradually abandon their own to sustain

the majority; the most forthright yet least appealing definition of a democracy.

It is easy to agree that death is what rapist-murderers deserve. Though it is

challenging to disagree, to disagree is not to defend or to condone their crimes; to

disagree entails holding the belief that retributive justice guarantees at most satisfaction.

To disagree is to recognize the current inability of this justice system to fully and surely

transform cumbers of criminals into assets of society, but to acknowledge that, as a

democracy, the good of the majority need not exclude a minority. The headlines and the

louder voices of Philippine society in the late 20 th century did not disagree.
Works Cited:

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish; The Birth of the Prison. Sheridan, Alan, Vintage

Books, 1995.

Gonzalez, Piedad, and Ghea Tenchavez. Bishop backs Chiong verdict. Philippine

Daily Inquirer 8 May 1999, p.1, 20.

Ocampo, Liv. Give convicts another chance - Fiscal : 'miscarriage of justice' in Chiong

rape-slay case? Philippine Star 18 Nov. 2005 : A29.

Palabrica, Raul. Something smells in the Chiong verdict. Philippine Daily Inquirer 10

May 1999. p.9.

Radelet, Michael. Humanizing the Death Penalty. Social Problems, vol. 48, no. 1,

2001, pp. 83–87. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/sp.2001.48.1.83.

Suansing, Ivan. Questions hound Chiong case after convictions. Philippine Daily

Inquirer, May 13, 1999, p.17.