“Supreme Court has said a description of a place to be searched is sufficient if the officer with the warrant can, with reasonable effort, ascertain and identify the place intended”
(Last of 2 parts)
“Thus, it has been held that a designation of a place to be searched as ‘MASAGANA compound located at Governor’s Drive, Barangay Lapidario, Trece Martires, Cavite City’; ‘the house of the accused Estela Tuan at Brgy. Gabriela Silang, Baguio City’; or ‘premises of Felix Gumpal Compound located at Ipil Junction, Echague, Isabela’ is sufficient description of the premises to be searched” (G.R. No. 213875, July 15, 2020).
“The search warrant in the instant case clearly complied with the foregoing standard since it particularly described the place to be searched, which is [Merlina’s] ‘house at Gitna, Brgy. Cuyab, San Pedro, Laguna.’
“[It] sufficiently described the place to be searched with clear indication that [it] was intended to authorize a search of the entire house of [Merlina]… to the exclusion of the other two structures or buildings similarly located along the street of Gitna.”
“What is… involved in this case is a singular structure containing multiple family dwellings or units therein – a fact which was discovered only after the search warrant was enforced and the search of [Merlina’s] house was conducted by the police officers.
“The… issue therefore lies in the validity of… the search of… a supposed multiple-occupancy structure containing several units occupied by other persons other than [Merlina].”
“[T]he units or rooms where [Merlina] and her siblings lived all form an integral part of the house, which, as already discussed, was sufficiently described with particularity under the warrant.
“The rooms inside the house, which were in fact occupied by family members of [Merlina], cannot be treated separately as they form part of the house where [Merlina] actually resided” (op. cit.).
Prudente v. Dayrit is instructive on this point, viz.: “The rule is, that a description of a place to be searched is sufficient if the officer with the warrant can, with reasonable effort, ascertain and identify the place intended.”
“People v. Tuan [described that]… the ‘house of the accused Estela Tuan at Brgy. Gabriela Silang, Baguio City,’ [containing] several rooms, was specific enough and, therefore, satisfied the constitutional requirement of definiteness” (op. cit.).
The description of the place to be searched in the search warrant was specific enough since there is only one house located at the stated address.
“[E]ven assuming that an ambiguity or inaccuracy in the interior description of the place to be searched may affect the validity of the warrant, such finding, which only emerged after the warrant was issued, has no bearing on its validity or invalidity.”
Citing the United States case of Maryland v. Garrison, “items of evidence that emerge after the warrant is issued have no bearing on whether or not a warrant was validly issued.”
“The validity of the warrant must be assessed on the basis of the information that the officers disclosed, or had a duty to discover and disclose, to the issuing Magistrate” (op.cit.).
“On this point, it has been held that the requirement of particularity as to the things to be seized does not require technical accuracy in the description of the property…
“It would be unreasonable to expect PO2 Avila, or an outsider such as Labrador for that matter, to have extensive knowledge of the interior set-up or floor plan of [Merlina’s] house without, however, having apparent authority or opportunity to access the premises prior to the search” (op. cit.).
The Supreme Court held that “the validity of the warrant must be assessed on the basis of the pieces of information made available to Judge Morga at the time PO2 Avila applied for the issuance of the search warrant.”
The warrant application was “sufficiently supported by the sketches of Labrador, and the testimonies of PO2 Avila and Labrador, who were, in fact, personally examined by Judge Morga in the form of searching questions and answers” (op. cit.).
