An Act to Provide for the Execution in Bilibid Prison of Criminals Sentenced to Death

December 18, 1906

ACT NO. 1577

AN ACT TO PROVIDE FOR THE EXECUTION IN BILIBID PRISON OF CRIMINALS SENTENCED TO DEATH

SECTION 1. Hereafter the execution of all criminals finally sentenced to incur the death penalty shall take place inside the walls of Bilibid Prison in the city of Manila, and within an inclosure to be erected or arranged for that purpose, if none suitable exists, under the direction of the Director of Prisons, which inclosure shall be higher than the gallows, and be so constructed as to exclude entirely the view of persons outside. For the purpose of carrying into effect all such executions of the death sentence the Director of Prisons shall perform the duties prescribed by existing law for sheriffs of the Courts of First Instance; the order of execution shall be directed to him instead of to the sheriff of the court, and he shall return to the court the order of execution, duly certifying thereon that he has complied therewith in the manner prescribed by law for sheriffs of the courts. Hereafter it shall not be necessary for the clerk of the Court of First Instance to witness the execution, nor to certify said act to the court. Such executions shall be conducted by the persons prescribed by existing law for the conducting of executions at said institution or by such law as may be hereafter enacted.

SECTION 2. The following persons only may be present at an execution: Officials and employees of Bilibid Prison and such persons as may be necessary, in the opinion of the Director of Prisons, to assist in conducting the execution; members of the medical profession, including the prison doctor; the spiritual adviser of the condemned; the chaplain, or chaplains, of the prison; the counsel of the condemned; and any of the relatives or friends of the condemned, not exceeding ten in number.

SECTION 3. All provisions of the Spanish Penal Code, of Act Numbered Four hundred and fifty-one of the Philippine Commission, and of any other statute, rule, regulation, or order in conflict or inconsistent with the provisions of this Act are hereby repealed: PROVIDED, That the terms of this Act shall not apply to the Moro Province, in which province the laws in force with respect to executions at the time of the passage of this Act shall continue in full force and effect.

SECTION 4. The public good requiring the speedy enactment of this bill, the passage of the same is hereby expedited in accordance with section two of "An Act prescribing the order of procedure by the Commission in the enactment of laws," passed September twenty-sixth, nineteen hundred.

SECTION 5. This Act shall take effect on its passage.

ENACTED, December 18, 1906.