Jose Jose M, De Ungria Maria Corazon A
Jose M. Jose Law Office, 60 Rivera Street, San Juan City, 1500, Philippines.
DNA Analysis Laboratory, Natural Sciences Research Institute, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Philippines.
Forensic Sci Int Mind Law. 2021 Nov;2:100054. doi: 10.1016/j.fsiml.2021.100054. Epub 2021 May 2.
The Philippine Congress recently passed a bill amending the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 and reimposing the penalty of life imprisonment to death for specific-drug related offenses. House Bill No. 7814 also allows the presumption of guilt in certain drug-related crimes unless otherwise proven, thereby overturning the long-standing constitutional presumption of innocence. The bill has been sent to the Senate for its concurrence and could only be several steps away before being signed into law by President Rodrigo R. Duterte. This paper discusses the ramifications of the new bill and the questioned timeliness of its passage when the country continues to have a large and overcrowded prison population and a significant number of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 in Southeast Asia. The government's lapses in following the 2021 national vaccination plan became apparent in the 31 March 2021 assessment made by the congressional health panel on the government's response to the pandemic. From the authors' perspective, the urgency of using the country's limited resources to help medical frontliners and local government units prevent further infections and save lives should have outweighed the efforts exerted to pass a law that legalized the death penalty for the third time in the Philippines.
菲律宾国会最近通过了一项法案，修订了2002年的《危险药物法》，并重新对特定毒品相关罪行恢复判处终身监禁直至死刑的刑罚。众议院第7814号法案还允许在某些毒品相关犯罪中推定有罪，除非另有证明，从而推翻了长期存在的宪法无罪推定原则。该法案已送交参议院以求其同意，距离罗德里戈·R·杜特尔特总统签署成为法律可能仅差几步之遥。本文讨论了这项新法案的影响，以及在该国监狱人口仍然庞大且过度拥挤、东南亚因严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）导致大量死亡的情况下，对该法案通过时机的质疑。2021年3月31日国会健康小组对政府应对疫情措施的评估中，政府在执行2021年国家疫苗接种计划方面的失误显而易见。从作者的角度来看，利用该国有限资源帮助医疗一线人员和地方政府单位预防进一步感染并拯救生命的紧迫性，本应超过为通过一项在菲律宾第三次使死刑合法化的法律所付出的努力。
