FACTS: A SW was applied for and subsequently issued
by respondents to be served in the Registry of Deeds, provincial capitol of
Isabela in which it enumerated the things to be seized:
1. Undetermined number of Fake Land Titles, Official Receipts in the
Cashier's Office, Judicial Form No. 39 known as Primary Entry Book under No.
496 and other pertinent documents related therewith;
2. Blank Forms of Land Titles kept inside the drawers of every table of
employees of the Registry (sic) of Deeds;
3. Undetermined number of land Transfer transactions without the
corresponding payment of Capital Gains Tax and payment of documentary Stamps.
A motion to quash the SW was filed by the respondent contending that the
things to be seized were not described with particularity and was in a nature
of a general warrant, therefore, is a violation of the constitutional
prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures but was denied by the
RTC and the CA. Hence, the present
petition for certiorari. (The OSG in its comment agreed with petitioners.)
ISSUE: WON the warrant issued by the RTC was valid.
HELD:
Sec. 4. Requisites
for issuing search warrant. – A search warrant shall not issue except upon
probable cause in connection with one specific offense 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 things to be seized which may be anywhere in the
Philippines.
Sec. 5. Examination
of complainant; record. – The judge must, before issuing the warrant,
personally examine in the form of searching questions and answers, in writing
and under oath, the complainant and the witnesses he may produce on facts
personally known to them and attach to the record their sworn statements,
together with the affidavits submitted.
The things to be
seized must be described with particularity. Technical precision of description
is not required. It is only necessary that there be reasonable particularity and certainty as to the identity of the
property to be searched for and seized, so that the warrant shall not
be a mere roving commission. Any description
of the place or thing to be searched that will enable the officer making the
search with reasonable certainty to locate such place or thing is sufficient.
Thus,
the specific property to be searched for should be so particularly described as
to preclude any possibility of seizing any other property(test of
particularity).
As correctly pointed
out by the petitioner and the OSG, the terms expressly used in the warrant were
too all-embracing, with the obvious intent of subjecting all the records
pertaining to all the transactions of the petitioner's office at the Register
of Deeds to search and seizure. Such tenor of a seizure warrant contravenes the
explicit command of the Constitution that there be a particular description of
the things to be seized.