And so, at 3:39 p.m., Jesus Morallos, 32, became the fourth person to be executed in the Philippines this year. Two other convicts also dieddeath1a.jpg (11845 bytes) at in an outbuilding at New Bilibid Prison that day. Dante Piandiong, 27, was terminated 58 minutes earlier. Fifty-eight minutes after Jesus, Archie Bulan, 24, died in the same corrugated metal shack. Outside the prison there were prayers and cheers. A hundred or so death-penalty opponents, led by religious leaders, joined hands with relatives of the doomed and prayed for executions to stop. Others prayed, too. Twenty men and women twirled rosaries, eyes shut, hands clasped to heaven, beseeching the merciful Lord to please, dear God, let the court-sanctioned killings continue. No one knows if the Lord listened, but in the space of less than three hours Manila had executed more convicts than it has in nearly a quarter century.
After watching her husband die, 35-year-old Josepha staggered down the red steps of the Lethal Injection Center, crying hysterically as she grappled with her new status as the nation's latest and - for 58 minutes anyway - most celebrated widow. Her misery soon will be forgotten, probably even before other convicts head to the death chamber, maybe later this month. But the repercussions will continue to reverberate through the devoutly Catholic nation that was the first in Asia to abolish the death penalty in 1987, but one of the few countries anywhere to bring it back, six years later. President after president has advocated the ultimate penalty. Yet despite widespread public support, death sentences have proven far easier to decree than to execute. As a result, the Philippines has a Death Row population that, among democratic nations, is second only to that of the United States.
Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=83098.0