Miscarriage(s) of Justice? (2)

Genius in Hindsight

On the home front, Philippine history records the executions of Frs. Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora as unjust.  Jose Rizal’s dedication to their memory of his second novel, El Filibusterismo, said it all.  “The Church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime that has been imputed to you; the Government, by surrounding your trials with mystery and shadow, causes the belief that there was some error…”

“In so far, therefore, as your complicity in the Cavite mutiny is not clearly proved…,” Rizal continued, “…let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over your unknown tombs, and any one who, without clear proofs, attacks your memory, stains his hands in your blood.”

And what Filipino, then and now, would say that Rizal’s own execution by firing squad as ordered by the Spanish colonials was just, or, for that matter, Andres Bonifacio’s untimely meeting with his Maker in the hands of fellow revolutionaries?  Dr. Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio are now two of our country’s foremost heroes who embody our national ideals.

The now infamous 1927 execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti was cleared in 1977, the 50th anniversary of their execution.  Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis declared that they were innocent and that “any disgrace should be forever removed from their names.”

In 1992, Galileo Galilei was finally cleared of heresy by a Vatican commission arranged by Pope John Paul II who wished to heal the divide between faith and science.

The most famous victim of the most humiliating capital punishment now has a major world religion named after Him, with one-third of the world as His followers, the Christians.

As centuries rolled, so did changes in torture and capital punishment.  Crucifixion was abolished by Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century AD, though it was still used in France until 1127.

The ‘benefit of clergy’ or literacy test was finally stopped by a law in 1706 while trial by combat disappeared in Europe three centuries earlier, at the end of the 14th century.  Death by burning was abolished in Britain in 1790.

Death to the Death Penalty

Enlightened governments and humanitarian movements gave impetus to the abolition of the death penalty.  Portugal, whose last execution of a criminal was in 1846, abolished capital punishment in 1867.  Australia abolished it state by state starting in 1922.

Except for crimes of treason and piracy, Britain abolished the death penalty for all other crimes in 1969, while France abolished it in 1981. Most other countries in Continental Europe such as Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Switzerland have done away with the death penalty.  So did Latin American countries like Brazil and Venezuela.

The death penalty though is still invoked in most states in the US and in countries like Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.

Albert Pierrepoint, the British hangman who resigned in 1956, said in his biography that he functioned on behalf of the State for what he thought “…was the most humane and the most dignified method of meting out death to a delinquent? however justified or unjustified the allotment of death may be? and on behalf of humanity I trained other nations to adopt the British system of execution.”

His experience, he said, left him a bitter aftertaste. He concluded thus, “…that I do not now believe that any one of the hundreds of executions I carried out has in any way acted as a deterrent against future murder.  Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing except revenge.”

All legal systems are not too perfect as to be airtight and beyond loopholes.  Where there is capital punishment, so can there be a possible miscarriage of justice with appalling results since death is irreversible.

Another result is far from death penalty’s desired deterrent effect? it creates martyrs as public sympathy may arise, as in the case of political prosecutions.  But nothing is more compelling against the death penalty as the possibility that the person executed has committed no crime.

(Sept 2004)