Capiz court orders release of 5 Tumandoks nabbed on faulty warrants
MANILA, Philippines — A Capiz court has ordered the release of four members of a Tumandok community who arrested in raids in December where nine people were also killed.
Judge Rommel Leonor of Capiz Regional Trial Court Branch 21 said the warrants to search the houses of Eleutera Caro, Jucie Caro, Rollen Catamin, Marilou Catamin and Marivic Aguirre for guns and explosives were void because they were not specific enough.
He said the warrants, which gave the addresses of the Caros and Catamins as "unnumbered house located at Zone 2, Barangay Roosevelt, Tapaz, Capiz" and of Aguirre as "Sitio Proper, Barangay Lahug, Tapaz, Capiz" were not "sufficient to satisfy the constitutional requirement of definiteness or particularity or specificity."
There were no descriptions of where the houses were located "whether [they are] on top of a hill or near a dug well" and the warrants did not even note the color of the houses or other ways to identify the place to be searched.
The court said that this would make it difficult for police officers serving the warrant to find the house to be searched, making errors probable.
"Thus, it will create a situation wherein the serving police officer will be given much leeway or discretion in serving the search warrants, which the Constitution prohibits," the court also said.
The Constitution guarantees the right against unreasonable search.
The court noted that, in Aguirre's case, the warrant was served by police officers who had not been on the team that conducted surveillance on the house and "were really strangers to the place and really not familiar on the supposed location of the house of the accused."
A sketch of the house was not included in the warrant and they could not ask residents for directions since the raid was done before dawn.
With the quashal of the search warrants, evidence from the raids is suppressed and is inadmissible.
The court disagreed with the arguments of the accused that Regional Trial Courts in Manila and Quezon City did not have jurisdiction to issue the warrants, saying this was allowed by A.M. No. 99-20-09-SC.
The Office of the Court Administrattor circular allowing this has since been repealed and the Supreme Court has limited the power of the executive and vice executive judges of the Manila and Quezon City RTCs to issue warrants outside their territorial jurisdictions but within their judicial regions.
Rights groups and legal assistance groups have repeatedly said the warrants, which they describe as "templated", are used by police to supress and silence activists.
Similar charges against Lady Ann Salem, an editor for alternative news website Manila Today, were dismissed last February over inconsistencies in witness testimonies in the application for a search warrant against her and labor unionist Rodrigo Esparago last December.
The two were released in March. — Jonathan de Santos
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