THE recent admission by Supreme Court Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban that a “judicial error”

could have been committed in the conviction and execution of Leo Echegaray has prompted a hail of
criticisms — some even self-serving — addressed at the infallibility of the High Court magistrates.
In June 1996, the Court affirmed a Quezon City court’s decision to mete the death penalty on
Echegaray for the rape of a minor. Echagaray was the first to die by lethal injection in 1999 with the
reimposition of the death penalty. But Panganiban was of the opinion that Echegaray’s penalty should
have been reduced to reclusion perpetua(equivalent to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole
after 30 years) since it was not proven during the trial that he was the “father, stepfather or
grandfather” of the victim, a qualifying circumstance for him to have been meted the capital
punishment.
But the Echagaray case is not the first time that the SC, the ultimate arbiter of a convicted person’s
innocence or guilt, has proved itself not infallible. At least two recent cases — involving Marlon
Parazo (1999) and Roberto Lara and Roderick Licayan (2004) — illustrate this malady, according to
Mamamayang Tutol sa Bitay-Movement for Restorative Justice (MTB-MRJ), a nationwide network of
some 150 human rights, sectoral, political, and church groups opposed to the death penalty.
Parazo, deaf, blind, mute and retarded, was meted the death sentence in 1995 for rape and attempted
homicide. The court that tried his case never bothered to ensure that he understood the proceedings
against him. His multiple disabilities were never mentioned in court, not even by his court-appointed
lawyer. His sentence was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1997. Taking up his case, the Free Legal
Assistance Group (FLAG) was able to have the high court reverse itself in 1999.

Scheduled for execution on January 30, 2004, Roberto Lara and Roderick Licayan were given a 30-
day reprieve pending an appeal to reopen their case in light of new evidence. By a very close vote of
7-6, the SC decided to look at the new evidence: the sworn affidavit of a recently apprehended co-
defendant that cleared both Lara and Licayan of the crime for which they were about to be executed.
The retrial is ongoing at RTC Branch 272 in Marikina City, where both hope to prove themselves
innocent.
In the above cases, the SC was able to rectify its miscarriage of justice. Panganiban also said that the
Court has taken measures to review death penalty cases with “painstaking care,” citing the case of
Edgar Gallo wherein the Court belatedly reduced the penalty toreclusion perpetua, even though the
decision meting out death had already become final.
Still, there have been instances when it was not able to do so. MTB-MRJ cites a study by Dawson and
Gregory (2004) which documents the case of a 79-year-old man wrongfully sentenced to death
(Republic Act No. 7659, recently repealed by Congress, prohibited the meting of the death penalty on
those below 18 and above 70 years old). Unfortunately, the man died on death row before the SC
could review his case, five years after sentencing.
To be fair, the Supreme Court has acknowledged in GR No. 147678-87 (People v. Mateo, July 7,
2004) the judicial error rate of 71.77 percent on death penalty cases, though this would even increase
to almost 80 percent early this year.
The SC’s review of capital punishment cases up to January 2006, as documented by MTB-MRJ, found
out that four out of five death inmates have been wrongfully sentenced by the various lower courts. Of
the 1,513 cases reviewed, almost half (645) were modified (from death penalty to reclusion perpetua
or indeterminate sentence), close to a third (456) were transferred to the Court of Appeals, 69 were
acquitted, and 37 were remanded for further proceedings. Only 270 cases (18 percent) were affirmed
by the high court.
The figures reported by the chief justice are however slightly lower — 65 acquittals, 230 affirmations,
651 cases either remanded for further proceedings, or reduced toreclusion perpetua or other lower
penalties out of 907 cases reviewed.
A study conducted by the University of Westminster-based Centre for Capital Punishment Studies
observed that in most cases of wrongful sentences, “the letter of the law is often ignored, either
because documentary evidence does not exist or because the presiding judge is ignorant of the law.”
The most glaring defects involve the well-documented cases of minors (below 18) and the elderly
(above 70) sentenced to death, in clear disregard of the law. In 2000, for instance, an 81-year-old
woman received the death sentence. In October 2005, the Alyansa ng mga Inmates sa Death Row
(Alis-DR) reported that 18 male death row inmates were minors at the time of the alleged crimes for
which they were sentenced, while another 11 were over the age of 70.
MTB-MRJ has also documented several instances when judges have sentenced mentally ill persons.
The most bizarre example of this concerns a woman who received the capital punishment despite
incontrovertible medical evidence (from two doctors) that she was severely mentally ill at the
commission of the crime. Said the MTB-MRJ report:
The trial judge disregarded the doctors’ testimonies, pointing out that the accused herself failed to give
evidence of her mental condition. In an even more bizarre twist to the case, another criminal action
was brought against the woman for property damage she caused at the time of the crime. This time,
relying on evidence from the same doctors, the trial judge found the woman not guilty on grounds of
insanity