October 14, 2003 – In the report “Philippines: Something hanging over me. Child offenders under sentence of death” Amnesty International has denounced the death sentences of at least seven child offenders in the Philippines, one of the first countries in the region to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Children.
Ramon Nicodemus, Saturani Panggayong, Roger Pagsibagan, Larina Perpinan, Elmer Butal, Cristopher Padua and Ronald Bragas are all on death row. Now in their twenties, the seven were convicted for crimes committed between 1995 and 1998 when each of them were reportedly under the age of 18, and they have been detained since that time in adult facilities.
“I could not keep myself from crying, more so, when I saw my mother who almost died crying. My grandmother and aunt were there also. They could not believe what happened to me. I myself could not accept it. I was only 20 years old and for me, life had lost all meaning", said Elmer Butal when he was convicted to death.
“Children, by definition, are not fully developed emotionally, intellectually and physically. Anyone asked to list characteristics associated with childhood and adolescence would likely include at least one of the following: impulsiveness, lack of self-control, vulnerability to the domination of elders and underdeveloped sense of judgment and responsibility. They may have greater difficulty fully understanding the consequences of the actions and decisions they take”, says the report, concluding that “the adult criminal justice system and its system of sentencing are ill-suited, ineffective and inappropriate for youth offenders”.
Alfredo Baroy was convicted for committing three rapes on 2 March 1998. At that time, he was 14 years old. Three death sentences were imposed on him by the Regional Trial Court, despite indications that he had been legally a child at the time the crimes were committed. On 9 May 2002, Baroy's sentence was reduced to life imprisonment not on the basis of his minority but because of other technicalities of the case.
“For child offenders, the sentence itself and the lengthy delays in rectifying it may have a significantly greater impact than they would have on adults. Children are less likely to understand the legal process. The years that pass also constitute a much larger proportion of children's lives and are an important period of social and intellectual development”, alert the Amnesty International document.
US leading executer
Amnesty reports that countries such as the Philippines and Guatemala have followed the lead of the USA on the death penalty and execution methods. The US continues to execute underage offenders, including those who were 16 at the time of the crime committed. Sean Sellers was executed by lethal injection in the state of Oklahoma on February 4, 1999. It was the first time in 40 years that the USA executed someone who was 16 at the time of the offence committed.
Amnesty International said that “the execution of Sean Sellers shames the USA and is a further sign of its selective contempt for the international human rights standards it claims to support.” USA is the world’s leading executer of youth that were under 18 at the time of the crimes were committed, having executed more child offenders since 1990 than the rest of the world combined.
"The profile of the typical condemned teenager is not of a youngster from a stable, supportive background, but rather of a mentally impaired or emotionally disturbed adolescent emerging from a childhood of abuse, deprivation and poverty. A glimpse of the background of the child offenders executed in the USA suggests that society had failed many of them well before it decided to kill them", says an Amnesty International report on the death penalty and children in the USA.
