Tricoteuse

(Today, I give way to a dear friend and an even more wonderful human being, Atty. Marie Yuvienco. A graduate of Ateneo Law School, Marie is the managing partner of Yuvienco, Quizon and Olalia. Marie is a peace and human rights advocate, which was on full display as legal consultant in the peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the NDFP under the Ramos, Aquino and Duterte administrations. By the way, Marie is an avid golfer and has a mean swing where she gives no quarter! I have been seeking her intercession to convince her cousin, my nomad travel partner, to get back to the game of golf. Alas, the latter prefers traveling.)

We have a saying in criminal law: ‘Tis better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to go to jail. There is nothing in those words to disagree with, but let’s reverse that statement, raise the stakes and ask: Is it better for 10 innocent men to go free than for one guilty man to be sentenced to death?

Section 19(1) of our Bill of Rights prohibits the infliction of “cruel, degrading or inhuman punishment,” including the death penalty, unless Congress provides otherwise in the case of heinous crimes.

Our wording differs slightly from the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment. In our jurisdiction, it suffices that a penalty be cruel OR degrading OR inhuman to be constitutionally prohibited; the American counterpart, in contrast, demands that a proposed penalty be both cruel AND unusual.

Two recent incidents in the United States invite a fresh inquiry as to whether the death penalty per se constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

The first involves Christa Pike who, in 1995, had been put on death row by a Tennessee judge for the torture and murder of her high school classmate, Colleen Slemmer. Pike was 19 then, the victim 18. Pike’s co-accused, her boyfriend Tadaryl Shipp, was only 17 and, because of his age, received a life sentence. Pike was in prison for 30 years before her execution by lethal injection was scheduled for 30 September.

The trouble was she survived the execution attempt even after being injected twice with pentobarbital. She was rushed to the ICU and, after several days, managed to recover. Doctors believe the drug was improperly administered and spread subcutaneously instead of intravenously. Reports say that Pike awoke angry and disoriented; she has since been released from the hospital and returned to jail.

Executions in Tennessee, meanwhile, have been suspended for the remainder of 2026, but there has been no definitive statement from the governor’s office on whether the state will attempt to kill her again.

The second involves former US Army Major Nidal Hasan, who shot dead 13 unarmed soldiers and wounded 32 others in Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009. He is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on 3 December. Barring a last-minute reprieve, Hasan’s will be the first US military execution in 60 years. His situation differs from Pike’s in that his execution will be livestreamed, as promised by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

Capital punishment in the Philippines was abolished in June 2006 when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed into law Republic Act 9346. The Philippines ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in November the following year, committing the country to the permanent abolition of capital punishment. These legal developments, however, did not stop attempts by lawmakers and various administrations to revive the death penalty.

Because our Bill of Rights left the door open to the restoration of capital punishment, in 1993, President Fidel Ramos signed into law Republic Act 7659, doing exactly that for crimes like rape, murder and treason. He also signed Republic Act 8177, which provides for execution by lethal injection; previously, the choices were electrocution or poison gas.

I remember distinctly what I was doing on 5 February 1999, a little before three in the afternoon. I was saying a little prayer for Leo Echegaray, who had been convicted of incestuous rape and sentenced to death, and whose appeal had been denied by the Supreme Court. Leo was the first to be executed in the Philippines in 23 years when his sentence was carried out; he was 38 years old.

Eduardo Agbayani was not much older — only 41 — when he was put to death, also for incestuous rape. Agbayani’s case stands apart because of circumstances that, had timing allowed, might have led to a different outcome. At the urging of Bishop Ted Bacani, President Joseph Estrada had agreed to grant Agbayani a reprieve and made the call. Estrada, however, could not get through to Bilibid, where the execution was to take place — accounts differ as to whether the line was busy or he had dialed the wrong number — and managed to reach the authorities a minute or so after Agbayani had been declared dead.

The American examples give us pause to think about what happens next. By any metric, it will be cruel AND unusual for the state of Tennessee to try and kill Christa Pike again. Her advocates argue that she has medical conditions — hard-to-find veins, for one — that make death by lethal injection not feasible.

The Death Penalty Information Center, an American nonprofit that compiles dates and analyses on capital punishment, details 65 botched executions from 1982 to 2006 involving asphyxiation, electrocution and lethal injection — eight of the last happened because the personnel were unable to correctly insert an IV line, just as happened with Pike. As for Hasan, the proposal to livestream his execution verges on the macabre — who would even watch?

During the French Revolution, history records that a class of working women would do their knitting while watching people being guillotined. They were called tricoteuses.

For comments, email bing_matoto @yahoo.com.