PEOPLE VS CA (291 SCRA 400)
FACTS
A petition
for certiorari has been filed to invalidate the order of Judge Casanova which
quashed search warrant issued by Judge Bacalla and declared inadmissible for
any purpose the items seized under the warrant.
>An
application for a search warrant was made by S/Insp Brillantes against Mr.
Azfar Hussain who had allegedly in his possession firearms and explosives at
Abigail Variety Store, Apt 1207
Area F. Bagon Buhay Avenue
ISSUE: WON a search warrant was validly
issued as regard the apartment in which private respondents were then actually
residing, or more explicitly, WON that particular apartment had been specifically
described in the warrant.
HELD:
The ambiguity lies outside the instrument, arising from the absence of a meeting of minds as to the place to be searched between the applicants for the warrant and the Judge issuing the same; and what was done was to substitute for the place that the Judge had written down in the warrant, the premises that the executing officers had in their mind. This should not have been done. It is neither fair nor licit to allow police officers to search a place different from that stated in the warrant on the claim that the place actually searched — although not that specified in the warrant — is exactly what they had in view when they applied for the warrant and had demarcated in their supporting evidence. What is material in determining the validity of a search is the place stated in the warrant itself, not what the applicants had in their thoughts, or had represented in the proofs they submitted to the court issuing the warrant.
The ambiguity lies outside the instrument, arising from the absence of a meeting of minds as to the place to be searched between the applicants for the warrant and the Judge issuing the same; and what was done was to substitute for the place that the Judge had written down in the warrant, the premises that the executing officers had in their mind. This should not have been done. It is neither fair nor licit to allow police officers to search a place different from that stated in the warrant on the claim that the place actually searched — although not that specified in the warrant — is exactly what they had in view when they applied for the warrant and had demarcated in their supporting evidence. What is material in determining the validity of a search is the place stated in the warrant itself, not what the applicants had in their thoughts, or had represented in the proofs they submitted to the court issuing the warrant.
The place
to be searched, as set out in the warrant, cannot be amplified or modified by
the officers'
own
personal knowledge of the premises, or the evidence they adduced in support of
their application for the warrant. Such a change is proscribed by the
Constitution which requires inter alia the search warrant to particularly
describe the place to be searched as well as the persons or things to be
seized. It would concede to police officers the power of choosing the place to
be searched, even if it not be that delineated in the warrant. It would open
wide the door to abuse of the search process, and grant to officers executing a
search warrant that discretion which the Constitution has precisely removed
from them. The particularization of the description of the place to be searched
may properly be done only by the Judge, and only in the warrant itself; it
cannot be left to the discretion of the police officers conducting the search.