Abolition as Imposition? Colonialism, Independence, and the "First Abolition" of the Death Penalty in the Philippines, 1932–46

The American colonization of the Philippines introduced the electric chair for the death penalty in 1926. However, because of a confluence of opinion between the colonial and nationalist leadership, no executions were carried out between 1932 and 1950, after the country’s independence. Revision of the Philippines’ criminal law began within a decade after annexation in 1898, intended to replace the harsh and anachronistic punishments of the Spanish-era penal code. In 1933, President Roosevelt appointed Frank Murphy, mayor of Detroit and lifelong opponent of capital punishment, to be the last Governor-General of the Philippines. Pursuant to a 1901 delegation of the pardon power to the Philippines’ civilian governor, Murphy commuted every death sentence, an abolitionist position he later held as Michigan governor, U.S. attorney general, and Supreme Court justice. In 1935, the Philippines passed a home rule constitution with a president as head of state. The newly-elected Manuel Quezon pledged to continue the policy of commuting death sentences. In his autobiography, Quezon recalled Filipino independence hero José Rizal, executed by the Spanish government for rebellion in 1896, as the reason for his “reluctance to believe that capital punishment should ever be carried out.” In later decades, Murphy’s quixotic moratorium was framed as a colonial relic without legitimacy, to be reinstated as a prerogative of a sovereign and independent state after 1946. This paper questions whether the “First Abolition” of the death penalty in the Philippines was an arrogant imposition by revealing the alignment between colonial and nationalist discourses of the time. A historical perspective on the moratorium critiques the framing of death penalty abolition in the Philippines in imperialist versus nationalist terms, which durably persisted through the Marcos dictatorship, two rounds of abolition in the democratic period, and threatened reinstatement by the populist President Duterte.