Herbie Gomez TWO arguments for capital punishment stand out in this raging national debate on the move to bring back the death penalty: 1) there is a need for an effective crime deterrent, and 2) there is a growing clamor for justice. Is capital punishment really effective at preventing crime? Not really. Until I see credible data, I doubt. There have been studies that show that capital punishment has had little effect, if any, on the criminal mindset. The position of the United Nations on this is backed by acceptable data, studies and history, not emotional outbursts. You see, when criminals break the law, they expect to benefit and get away with it. That is the problem. What would make them think twice is if we really make crime a highisk undertaking not by threatening gangsters with death (many of them already eat threats and violence for breakfast) but by significantly increasing the batting average of the police in arresting lawbreakers, and improving the ability of our prosecutors to win convictions. Only when criminals and potential criminals realize that there is no way they would not get caught, and whatever benefit from a crime would be taken away from them, would they see that breaking the law is not really a good idea. But many of today’s criminals think that, at least in the Philippines, crime pays because most lawbreakers don’t get caught. Compare the number of crimes being committed daily with the number of arrests being made and the rate of convictions, and you’d see the big picture. Impunity is the problem. Still, there are crimes committed out of sheer desperation or because for some, it’s a life and death situation or the immediate need or desire is so pressing that they simply do not care of potential consequences in the future. We have seen senseless murders take place as a result of road rage. In situations like that, when there is a moment of insanity or unreason, the would-be criminal spends no time thinking about the penal code. (Remember Rolito Go?) And our courts are replete with records of crimes of passion. So you tell me how death penalty would prevent any of these crimes from being committed? Given that, I’m ruling out the crime-deterrence argument in this raging debate on the death penalty. What about justice? It amazes me no end that many people don’t understand that justice is “the quality of being just or fair,” and that it only happens when there is a judgment--when rights have been determined and rewards and punishments have been assigned. But the justice system in this country is so defective (read: messed up) that more and more people are getting convinced that it’s actually inherently ineffective, apparently the reason why there is a clamor for jungle justice which is not justice at all. If we are really after of justice, then we won’t be scoffing at human rights and the due process of law, rules that civilized people invented after centuries of trials and errors in the administration of justice. What we really want want is “swift justice” which is actually another way of saying “payback.” We cry out,“Patya na, patya na, patya na!” which is really no different from “Crucify him, crucify him, crucify him!” And so, I’m ruling out the justice argument, too. Now, what are we going to do about it? Perhaps there is a scientific basis for our craving to see bloodshed. Recently, researchers from the Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas and University of Granada in Spain released a study that humans “evolved the tendency to kill each other from our primate ancestors,” and that there was a period--at the time of the origin of our species--when we were killing each other “six times more often than the average mammal today.” Says the leader of the research team, Jose Maria Gomez (no relations): “We found that human lethal violence has an evolutionary origin but can be modulated by some ecological and cultural factors, like the type of sociopolitical organization... “The main message of the study, from our point of view, is that no matter how violent or pacific we are in the origin, we can modulate the level of interpersonal violence by changing our social environment... We can build a more pacific society if we wish.” Let’s not even kid ourselves. Whenever we talk of the death penalty, we want vengeance, not justice. And since we are a nation now obsessed with killing people in the 21st century, and we want convicts and mere crime suspects to die not really because we want justice but because we want revenge, we should shift the national debate to the method of death penalty. Death by electrocution, hanging or firing squad comes too quickly, and lethal injection is too humane. None of these would satisfy the bloodthirsty mob’s demand for vengeance. Morality, humanity and justice aside, why is the life of a hardened criminal, a loser and a bum who likely has no future, a fair payment for the life of a law-abiding victim who had a promising future ahead of him? That’s like trading a diamond ring with puwet ng baso, or one hectare in downtown Cagayan de Oro with a hectare of agricultural property in far-flung Miarayon in Talakag, Bukidnon. And why should the vicious criminal be afforded the luxury of a quick death when the victim slowly suffered unimaginable pain in his hands? In the lethal injection method, they actually sterilize the needle--can you believe that? Looking at it from the perspective of a vengeful citizen who’s sick and tired of seeing crime, that’s not fair. That’s not an eye for an eye. That’s not vengeance. Something or someone has brought out the violent and sadistic primates in us that it looks like we no longer wish to modulate the level of our inherent aptitude for human lethal violence. And so, we might as well give in to our primal instincts. Puslan man. The hell with humanity, morality, justice and human rights. We want a slow, degrading, painful and agonizing death to the hardened criminal, not just people who are into drugs. Let’s gouge out their eyes, cut their limbs off one part at a time, and ask the President to come and personally sodomize them if they committed sex crimes before leaving them to the rats in Divisoria where they can rot under the scorching heat of the sun. Now, that is good old fashioned vengeance in the tradition of the mythical Code of Kalantiaw. But is that what we really want? How would that make us any different from the very people we want to kill? Pastilan.