"The Supreme Court has spoken."
"The Supreme Court has spoken."
That was how the Supreme Court has described President Duterte’s war on illegal drugs of the past four years which has been marked by unreasonable arrests, searches and seizures, and rampant killings.
The war has resulted in the killing of up to 5,000 victims (government admission) and perhaps even up to 30,000 (according to human rights activists).
“A battle waged against illegal drugs that tramples on the rights of the people is not a war on drugs; it is a war against the people,” the Supreme Court said last week.
In a landmark ruling that settles the issue once and for all on the illegality and unconstitutionality of warrantless arrests and seizures, the Supreme Court by a vote of 11-3 on June 16, 2020, overturned rulings by the Regional Trial Court in 2017 and the Court of Appeals in 2018 which convicted Jerry Sapla for alleged possession of four bricks of marijuana inside a passenger jeepney stopped at a police checkpoint.
The decision was made known only last week. The decision is relevant in the light of COVID-19 checkpoints and attempts by the police to enter houses in search of COVID-19 victims.
More importantly, it in effect will emasculate the new Anti-Terror Law because tips or tsismis cannot be made a basis of a person’s arrest, a searches on his vehicle and house, as well as seizures of articles and documents therein.
The High Court set free Sapla because the police had no search warrant at the time of his arrest at 11:30 in the morning of Jan. 10, 2014, in Tabuk City, Kalinga.
The decision was penned by Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa and was concurred in by Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta, and Associate Justices Estela Perlas Bernabe, Marvic Leonen, Alexander Gesmundo, Jose Reyes Jr., Ramon Paul Hernando, Henri Jean Paul Inting, Rodil Zalameda, Edgardo delos Santos, and Samuel Gaerlan.
Justices Rosmari Carandang, Amy Lazaro Javier, and Mario Lopez dissented.
Without naming him, the Supreme Court lectured on President Duterte, himself a prominent activist lawyer, and denounces his war on illegal drugs. It said:
“The Bill of Rights is the bedrock of constitutional government. If people are stripped naked of their rights as human beings, democracy cannot survive and government becomes meaningless. This explains why the Bill of Rights, contained as it is in Article III of the Constitution, occupies a position of primacy in the fundamental law way above the articles on governmental power.”
“And in the Bill of Rights, the right against unreasonable searches and seizures is at the top of the hierarchy of rights, next only to, if not on the same plane as, the right to life, liberty and property, x x x for the right to personal security which, along with the right to privacy, is the foundation of the right against unreasonable search and seizure.”
“The Bill of Rights should never be sacrificed on the altar of convenience. Otherwise, the malevolent mantle of the rule of men dislodges the rule of law.”
“In order for the search of vehicles in a checkpoint to be non-violative of an individual’s right against unreasonable searches, the search must be limited to the following: (a) where the officer merely draws aside the curtain of a vacant vehicle which is parked on the public fair grounds; (b) where the officer simply looks into a vehicle; (c) where the officer flashes a light therein without opening the car’s doors; (d) where the occupants are not subjected to a physical or body search; (e) where the inspection of the vehicles is limited to a visual search or visual inspection; and (f) where the routine check is conducted in a fixed area.”
“In the erudite ponencia of Associate Justice Marvic Mario Victor F. Leonen, the Court held that, in determining whether there is probable cause that warrants an extensive or intrusive warrantless searches of a moving vehicle, ‘bare suspicion is never enough. While probable cause does not demand moral certainty, or evidence sufficient to justify conviction, it requires the existence of a reasonable ground of suspicion supported by circumstances sufficiently strong in themselves to warrant a cautious man to believe that the person accused is guilty of the offense with which he is charged.’”
In Valmonte, the Court stressed that “[f]or as long as the vehicle is neither searched nor its occupants subjected to a body search, and the inspection of the vehicle is limited to a visual search, said routine checks cannot be regarded as violative of an individual’s right against unreasonable search.”
The high court reminded Duterte that in criminal prosecutions, the law is heavily in favor of the accused who is presumed, by law, to be innocent. Sapla’s arrest, the court said, was tainted with violations of his right against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Can the police conduct a warrantless intrusive search of a vehicle on the sole basis of an unverified tip relayed by an anonymous informant? On this question, jurisprudence has vacillated over the years. The Court definitively settles the issue once and for all. The answer is no.
The decision said:
By constitutional design, the accused is afforded the presumption of innocence—it is for the State to prove the guilt of the accused. Without the State discharging this burden, the Court is given no alternative but to acquit the accused.
Moreover, if the process of gathering evidence against the accused is tainted by a violation of the accused’s right against unreasonable searches and seizures, which is a most cherished and protected right under the Bill of Rights, the evidence procured must be excluded, inevitably leading to the accused’s acquittal.
Therefore, while the Court recognizes the necessity of adopting a decisive stance against the scourge of illegal drugs, the eradication of illegal drugs in our society cannot be achieved by subverting the people’s constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizures. In simple terms, the Constitution does not allow the end to justify the means. Otherwise, in eradicating one societal disease, a deadlier and more sinister one is cultivated—the trampling of the people’s fundamental, inalienable rights. The State’s steadfastness in eliminating the drug menace must be equally matched by its determination to uphold and defend the Constitution. This Court will not sit idly by and allow the Constitution to be added to the mounting body count in the State’s war on illegal drugs.
Sapla, in his defense, denied the charges against him and instead, offered a different version of the incident.
He claimed that on 8 January 2014, he went to Tabuk City to visit a certain relative named Tony Sibal.
Two (2) days later, [accused-appellant Sapla] boarded a jeepney, and left for Roxas, Isabela to visit his nephew.
Upon reaching Talaca checkpoint, police officers flagged down the said jeepney in order to check its passenger[s’] baggages and cargoes. The police officers then found marijuana inside a sack and were looking for a person who wore fatigue pants at that time.
From the three passengers who wore fatigue pants, the said police officers identified him as the owner of the marijuana found inside the sack. [Accused-appellant Sapla] denied ownership of the marijuana, and asserted that he had no baggage at that time. Thereafter, the police officers arrested [accused-appellant Sapla] and brought him to the Talaca barracks, wherein the sack and marijuana bricks were shown to him.
