CONSTITUTIONAL VALIDITY AND MORAL JUSTIFICATION OF DEATH PENALTY The majority of the Court rejected the proposition, that the said law (Republic Act No. 7659) was cruel, unusual and excessive punishmentbut three justices of the Court disagreed. They said that Republic Act No. 7659 was enacted without complying with the twin requirements of compelling reasons involving heinous crimes. The Constitution did not contemplate a simple reimpositionof death penalty to offenses therefore already provided in the Revised Penal Code. The term “compelling reasons” used in the Constitution should showthat there must be a marked changein the milieu from that which prevailed at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. On the other hand that which exists at the time of the enactment of the death penalty statute that would makeit distinctively inexorable to mandate a death penalty. Given the circumstances and the law before the Court, imposition of death penalty has not beensatisfied. Another dissenting opinionstates that the framers of the Constitution really intended to abolish death penalty althoughit left to Congress the enactmentof a law reimposing death penalty which already existed in the Revised Penal Code. But Republic Act No. 7659 did not actually change the nature or the elementsof the crimesstated in the RPCortheexisting statutes. It merely made the penalty more severe. Congress merely selected some existing crimes for which it prescribed death penalty. It did not give a standard ora characterization by which Courts may be able to appreciate the heinousness of a crime. By merely reimposing capital punishmenton the very samecrimes which werealreadypenalized with death priorto the effectivity of the 1987 Constitution, Congress hasnot fulfilled its specific andpositive constitutional duty to determine "compelling reasons" involving heinous crimes. POSSIBILITY OF ERROR/RISK OF MISTAKEN EXECUTIONS Death Penalty prior to the 1987 Constitution. The records showthatout of those sentencedto die, several were acquitted by the Supreme Court. To cite some instances: iy June 1986, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentences for Alberto Bi In 1979, Manuel Navoa was convicted of arson with multiple homicide and 3. A certain Flores Doyoswasalso sentencedto die but waslater on acquitted whenthe SC foundthathis confession wasinvoluntary. 4. In June 1987, the SC acquitted Zosimo Crisologo, a deaf-mute who was convicted of the crime of Robbery with homicide. Sometime in 1977 he was Opida andVirgillio Marcelo finding that the trial Judge had been prejudiced against the defendants sentenced to death. On August 1986, he was acquitted bythe SC on the groundthathis confession wasextracted underduress. acquitted on the groundoflack of evidence.