"The issuance by the Supreme Court, even with some identifiable gaps, could be a game-changer."
This is a first of a series of columns on Article 3, Section 2 of the 1987 Constitution, which states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures of whatever nature and for any purpose shall be inviolable, and no search warrant or warrant of arrest shall issue except upon probable cause to be determined personally by the judge after examination under oath or affirmation of the complainant and the witnesses he may produce, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.”
I am motivated to write these articles with the issuance by the Supreme Court of the Rules on the Use of Body-Worn Cameras in the Execution of Warrants (Administrative Matter No. 21-06-08-SC) which has the effect of not only requiring law enforcers to wear body camera but scraps the power of courts to issue warrants outside their judicial jurisdiction because of the many abuses by law enforcers in the service of warrants. This issuance by the Supreme Court, even with some identifiable gaps, could be a game-changer. It can save lives if implemented effectively. Conversely, the rules it has replaced have been terrible and resulted in many instances of injustice.
Many persons have died or have been unjustly detained because of abuse of police officers in enforcing search and arrest warrants, abuse that body cameras could have prevented. Hopefully, this will put an end to courts in the National Capital Region that have functioned as factory warrants. These courts routinely issued warrants that were executed outside their jurisdiction, an anomalous situation which the former rules allowed.
I compliment Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo for his leadership in making this much-needed reform. Associate Justice Marvic Leonen should be acknowledged as the Supreme Court en banc relied on his recommendations.
The Supreme Court is of course basing its action on the concept of due process, which lays down the principle that taking life, liberty, and property by the State is conditioned on the compliance with the requirement of due process.
“Due process” is a rule of law most associated with the Magna Carta of 1215, which was a reaction to the oppressive rule of King John. To emphasize its importance, I bring to my constitutional law classes a replica of this classic document and point them to Chapter 39 which provides that no freeman will be seized, dispossessed of his property, or harmed except “by the law of the land.” In a 1354 statute of King Edward III that restated Magna Carta’s guarantee of the liberty of the subject, the phrase “due process of law” was used as a substitute to the term “the law of the land.”
Due process is a fundamental constitutional guarantee that all proceedings, be it criminal, civil, or administrative, will be fair and that one is given the opportunity to be heard before one’s life, liberty, or property is taken away by the government. It also connotes that a law as implemented is not unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious.
Failure to observe these rights will nullify the proceedings. Individuals are entitled to be notified of any pending case affecting their interests, and upon notice, they may claim the right to appear therein and present their side and to refute the position of the opposing parties.
In both procedural and substantive due process, a hearing is always a prerequisite, hence, the taking or deprivation of one’s life, liberty or property must be done upon and with observance of the “due process” clause of the Constitution. It is for this reason that when an individual is killed or deprived of liberty or property taken away from him without giving said individual an opportunity to defend himself or present evidence in his behalf that ono-observance of this requirement makes the act illegal.
On the other hand, the guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure springs from the common law maxim that "every man's house is his castle." The home retains a special place in search and seizure law, and continues to symbolize a zone of privacy often beyond the reach of the modern regulatory state, as stated in a 1969 American case Stanley v. Georgia.
As in all other rights, the guarantee is not absolute as this is qualified by the term unreasonable. In other words, search and seizure by law enforcement officers is unreasonable when conducted without a valid search warrant and without probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime is present. The primary remedy in illegal search cases is known as the "exclusionary rule". This means that any evidence obtained through an illegal search is excluded and cannot be introduced in court.
As we shall see in succeeding columns of this series, this rule is nuanced and affords certain exceptions in American as well as Philippines jurisprudence.
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