HARRY S. STONEHILL, ROBERT P. BROOKS, JOHN J. BROOKS and KARL BECK, petitioners, vs. HON. JOSE W. DIOKNO, in his capacity as SECRETARY OF JUSTICE; JOSE LUKBAN, in his capacity as Acting Director, National Bureau of Investigation; SPECIAL PROSECUTORS PEDRO D. CENZON, EFREN I. PLANA and MANUEL VILLAREAL, JR. and ASST. FISCAL MANASES G. REYES; JUDGE AMADO ROAN, Municipal Court of Manila; JUDGE ROMAN CANSINO, Municipal Court of Manila; JUDGE HERMOGENES CALUAG, Court of First Instance of Rizal-Quezon City Branch, and JUDGE DAMIAN JIMENEZ, Municipal Court of Quezon City, respondents.

G.R. No. L-19550 || June 19, 1967 || CONCEPCION, C.J.:FACTS: Respondents are government officers and judges who made possible the issuance of 42 search warrants against the petitioners for "violation of Central Bank Laws, Tariff and Customs Laws, Internal Revenue (Code) and the Revised Penal Code." Such warrants allowed the search of P’s persons and/or the premises of their offices, warehouses and/or residences, and to seize and take possession of the following personal property to wit:Books of accounts, financial records, vouchers, correspondence, receipts, ledgers, journals, portfolios, credit journals, typewriters, and other documents and/or papers showing all business transactions including disbursements receipts, balance sheets and profit and loss statements and Bobbins (cigarette wrappers).On March 20, 1962, petitioners filed with the Supreme Court this original action for certiorari, prohibition, mandamus and injunction, and prayed that a writ of preliminary injunction be issued restraining Rs from using the things seized as evidence. They also prayed that decision be rendered quashing the contested search warrants and declaring the same null and void because:(1) they do not describe with particularity the documents, books and things to be seized;(2) cash money, not mentioned in the warrants, were actually seized;(3) the warrants were issued to fish evidence against the aforementioned petitioners in deportation cases filed against them;(4) the searches and seizures were made in an illegal manner; and

(5) the documents, papers and cash money seized were not delivered to the courts that issued the warrants, to be disposed of in accordance with law.R counters, invoking the Moncado doctrine, that the defects of said warrants, if any, were cured by petitioners’ consent; and that, in any event, the effects seized are admissible in evidence against them. In short, the criminal cannot be set free just because the government blunders.On March 22, 1962, the Court issued the writ of preliminary injunction prayed for in the petition. However, on June 29, 1962, the writ was partially lifted or dissolved, insofar as the papers, documents and things seized from the offices of the corporations are concerned; but, the injunction was maintained as regards the papers, documents and things found and seized in the residences of petitioners.ISSUE: W/N the search warrants are valid and therefore, the objects seized may be validly admitted in court? – NORATIO:The documents, papers, and things seized may be divided into two groups:(a) those found and seized in the offices of the aforementioned corporations, and (b) those found and seized in the residences of petitioners herein.RE: First Group of seized objectsSC held that Ps do not have a cause of action to assail the validity of such warrants and seizures because said corporations have their respective personalities, separate and distinct from the personality of Ps. The legality of a seizure can be contested only by the party whose rights have been impaired thereby, and that the objection to an unlawful search and seizure is purely personal and cannot be availed of by third parties. Re: Second Group of seized objectsThe Constitution protects the rights of its citizens against unreasonable search and seizure in that:(1) no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause, to be determined by the judge in the manner set forth in said provision; (2) the warrant shall particularly describe the things to be seized.None of these requirements has been complied with in the contested warrants. Requirement # 1:The search warrants were issued against Ps for "violation of Central Ban Laws, Tariff and Customs Laws, Internal Revenue

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(Code) and Revised Penal Code." In other words, no specific offense had been alleged in said applications. The averments with respect to the offense committed were abstract. As a consequence, it was impossible for the judges who issued the warrants to have found the existence of probable cause, for the same presupposes the introduction of competent proof that the party against whom it is sought has performed particular acts, or committed specific omissions, violating a given provision of our criminal laws. Requirement # 2:The warrants authorized the search for and seizure of records pertaining to all business transactions of petitioners herein, regardless of whether the transactions were legal or illegal. The warrants sanctioned the seizure of all records of the petitioners and the aforementioned corporations, whatever their nature, thus openly contravening the explicit command of our Bill of Rights — that the things to be seized be particularly described — as well as tending to defeat its major objective: the elimination of general warrants.The Court abandoned the Moncado ruling (that even if the search warrants were unconstitutional, evidence seized may still be admitted, on the theory that an action for damages or any other remedy may be obtained against the erring officers). Instead, the Court adopted the exclusionary rule, realizing that this is the only practical means of enforcing the constitutional injunction against unreasonable searches and seizures. In the language of Judge Learned Hand: “…Only in case the prosecution which itself controls the seizing officials, knows that it cannot profit by their wrong will that wrong be repressed.”The efforts of the courts and their officials to bring the guilty to punishment, praiseworthy as they are, are not to be aided by the sacrifice of those great principles established by years of endeavor and suffering which have resulted in their embodiment in the fundamental law of the land.Indeed, the non-exclusionary rule is contrary, not only to the letter, but also, to the spirit of the constitutional injunction against unreasonable searches and seizures. If the applicant for a search warrant has competent evidence to establish probable cause of the commission of a given crime by the party against whom the warrant is intended, then there is no reason why the applicant should not comply with the requirements of the fundamental law. Upon the other hand, if he has no such competent evidence, then it is not possible for the Judge to find that there is probable cause, and, hence, no justification for the

issuance of the warrant. The only possible explanation (not justification) for its issuance is the necessity of fishing evidence of the commission of a crime. But, then, this fishing expedition is indicative of the absence of evidence to establish a probable cause.________________________________________________________

PEOPLE OF THE PHILS., plaintiff-appellee, vs. ABE VALDEZ y DELA CRUZ, accused-appellant (2000; Quisumbing; G.R. No. 129296)

FACTS: The RTC (Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya) found Abe Valdez guilty beyond reasonable doubt for violating Sec. 9 of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1972 (R.A. No. 6425), as amended by R.A. No. 7659. He was sentenced to suffer the penalty of death by lethal injection.

During the trial, a member of the police force (Tipay) testified that at around 10:15 a.m. of Sept. 24, 1996, he received a tip from an informer about a marijuana plantation, allegedly owned by Valdez at Sitio Bulan, Ibung, Villaverde, Nueva Vizcaya. The prohibited plants were allegedly planted close to his hut. Subsequently, Police Inspector Parungao formed a reaction team (Tipay was part of team) and he instructed them to uproot said marijuana plants and arrest their cultivator.

At 5 A.M. the following day, said police team and informer went to the said plantation. Upon their arrival, the police found Valdez alone in his nipa hut. They, then, proceeded to look around the area where he had his kaingin and saw 7 five-ft. high, flowering marijuana plants in 2 rows, approx. 25 m from his hut. PO2 Balut asked him who owned the prohibited plants and, according to Balut, the latter admitted that they were his. The police uprooted the 7 marijuana plants. Also, they took photos of Valdez standing beside the cannabis plants. He was then arrested.

On the other hand, the defense presented Valdez as its witness. According to him, at 10 A.M., Sept. 25, 1996, he was weeding his vegetable farm when he was called by a person he didn’t know. He was asked to go with the latter to "see something." The person then brought him to the place where the marijuana plants were found, approx. 100 m away from his nipa hut. 5 armed policemen were present and they made him stand in front of the hemp plants. He was then asked if he knew

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anything about the marijuana growing there. When he denied any knowledge thereof, SPO2 Libunao poked a fist at him and told him to admit ownership of the plants. Valdez was so afraid that he admitted owning the marijuana.

The police then took a photo of him standing in front of one of the marijuana plants. He was then made to uproot 5 of the cannabis plants, and bring them to his hut, where another photo was taken of him standing next to a bundle of uprooted marijuana plants. The police team then brought him to the police station at Villaverde. On the way, a certain Kiko Pascua, a barangay peace officer of Brgy. Sawmill, accompanied the police officers. Pascua, who bore a grudge against him, threatened him to admit owning the marijuana, otherwise he would "be put in a bad situation." At the police HQ, Valdez reiterated that he knew nothing about the marijuana plants seized by the police.

On cross-examination, Valdez declared that there were other houses around the vicinity of his kaingin, the nearest house being 100 m away. The latter house belonged to one Carlito Pascua who had a grudge against him. The spot where the marijuana plants were found was located between his house and Pascua's.

The prosecution presented SPO3 Tipay as its rebuttal witness. Tipay presented a sketch he made which showed the location of marijuana plants in relation to the old and new nipa huts of Valdez, as well as the closest neighbor. According to Tipay, the marijuana plot was located 40 m away from the old hut of Valdez and 250 m distant from Pascua’s hut. Tipay admitted that his basis for claiming that Valdez was the owner or planter of the seized plants was the information given him by the police informer and the proximity of his hut to the location of said plants.

The RTC held Valdez liable as charged for cultivation and ownership of marijuana plants. The case before the SC for automatic review.

ISSUE: WON the search and seizure of the marijuana plants are lawful

RULING: NO.

The Constitution lays down the general rule that a search and seizure must be carried on the strength of a judicial warrant. Otherwise, the search and seizure is deemed "unreasonable."

1. There was no search warrant issued by a judge after personal determination of the existence of probable cause. The police officers had at least 1 day to obtain a warrant to search Valdez's farm. Their informant had revealed his name to them. The place where the cannabis plants were planted was pinpointed. From the information they have, they could have convinced a judge that there was probable cause to justify the issuance of a warrant. But they did not. Instead, they uprooted the plants and apprehended the accused on the excuse that the 6-hour trip was inconvenient to them. 

2. The "plain view" doctrine does not apply. For the doctrine to apply, the following elements must be present:(a) a prior valid intrusion based on the valid warrantless arrest in which the police are legally present in the pursuit of their official duties;(b) the evidence was inadvertently discovered by the police who have the right to be where they are; and(c) the evidence must be immediately apparent; and(d) plain view justified mere seizure of evidence without further search.

PO2 Balut testified that they first located the marijuana plants before Valdez was arrested without a warrant. Hence, there was no valid warrantless arrest which preceded the search of the latter’s premises. Also, the police team was dispatched to Valdez's kaingin precisely to search for and uproot the prohibited flora. The seizure of evidence in "plain view" applies only where the police officer is not searching for evidence against the accused, but inadvertently comes across an incriminating object. Clearly, their discovery of the cannabis plants was not inadvertent. 

The Court also notes the testimony of SPO2 Tipay that upon arriving at the area, they first had to "look around the area" before they could spot the illegal plants. Patently, the seized marijuana plants were not "immediately apparent" and a "further search" was needed. In sum, the marijuana plants in question were not in "plain view."

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3. The Court cannot sustain the trial court's conclusion that just because the marijuana plants were found in an unfenced lot, Valdez could not invoke the constitutional safeguard against unreasonable searches by agents of the State. The right against unreasonable searches and seizures is the immunity of one's person, which includes his residence, his papers, and other possessions. The guarantee refers to "the right of personal security" of the individual. What is sought to be protected against the State's unlawful intrusion are persons, not places.

Thus, said plants cannot be used as evidence against appellant Valdez. They are fruits of the proverbial poisoned tree. It was, therefore, a reversible error on the part of the court a quo to have admitted and relied upon the seized marijuana plants as evidence to convict Valdez.

KATZ v US1967 || Stewart, J.

FACTS

The petitioner was convicted in the District Court for the Southern District of California under an eight-count indictment charging him with transmitting wagering information by telephone from Los Angeles to Miami and Boston, in violation of a federal statute. Government was permitted, over the petitioner's objection, to introduce evidence of the petitioner's end of telephone conversations, overheard by FBI agents who had attached an electronic listening and recording device to the outside of the public telephone booth from which he had placed his calls. In affirming his conviction, the Court of Appeals rejected the contention that the recordings had been obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment regarding unlawful search and seizure because "there was no physical entrance into the area occupied by the petitioner."

ISSUE

1. WON a public telephone booth is a constitutionally protected area so that evidence obtained by attaching an electronic listening recording device to the top of such a booth is obtained in violation of the right to privacy of the user of the booth – YES

2. WON government is guilty of unlawful search and seizure – YES

RULING

The petitioner argued that the booth was a "constitutionally protected area." The Government has maintained that it was not. But this deflects attention from the problem presented by this case. Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in public area, may be constitutionally protected. What petitioner sought to exclude when he entered the phone booth was not the intruding eye -- it was the uninvited ear.

The Government contends that its agents in this case should not be tested by Fourth Amendment requirements, for the surveillance technique involved no physical penetration of the booth. The Court has since departed from this narrow view. Indeed, we have expressly held that the Fourth Amendment governs not only the seizure of tangible items, but extends as well to the recording of oral statements, overheard without any "technical trespass under . . . local property law."

The question remaining for decision, then, is whether the search and seizure conducted complied with constitutional standards. In that regard, the Government's position is that its agents acted in an entirely defensible manner: they did not begin their electronic surveillance until investigation of the petitioner's activities had established a strong probability that he was using the telephone in question to transmit gambling information to persons in other States, in violation of federal law. It adds that agents took great care to overhear only the conversations of the petitioner himself.

Accepting this account of the Government's actions as accurate, it is clear that surveillance was so narrowly circumscribed that a duly authorized magistrate could constitutionally have authorized, with appropriate safeguards, the very limited search and seizure that the Government asserts, in fact, took place. Yet the inescapable fact is that this restraint was imposed by the agents themselves, not by a judicial officer. They were not required, before commencing the search, to present their estimate of probable cause. They were not compelled to observe

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precise limits. Nor were they directed to notify the authorizing magistrate in detail of all that had been seized. In the absence of such safeguards, this Court has never sustained a search upon the sole ground that officers reasonably expected to find evidence of a particular crime.

PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES vs. ANDRE MARTIG.R. 81561, January 18, 1991

FACTS:

- On August 14, 1987, between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m., the appellant and his common-law wife, Shirley Reyes, went to the booth of the "Manila Packing and Export Forwarders" in the Pistang Pilipino Complex, Ermita, Manila, carrying with them four (4) gift wrapped packages. Anita Reyes (the proprietress and no relation to Shirley Reyes) attended to them. The appellant informed Anita Reyes that he was sending the packages to a friend in Zurich, Switzerland. Marti wrote the name and address of the consignee, namely, "WALTER FIERZ, Mattacketr II, 8052 Zurich, Switzerland"

- Anita Reyes then asked the appellant if she could examine and inspect the packages. Appellant, however, refused, assuring her that the packages simply contained books, cigars, and gloves and were gifts to his friend in Zurich. In view of appellant's representation, Anita Reyes no longer insisted on inspecting the packages.

- Before delivery of appellant's box to the Bureau of Customs and/or Bureau of Posts, Mr. Job Reyes (proprietor) and husband of Anita (Reyes), following standard operating procedure, opened the boxes for final inspection. When he opened appellant's box, a peculiar odor emitted therefrom. His curiosity aroused, he squeezed one of the bundles allegedly containing gloves and felt dried leaves inside. Opening one of the bundles, he pulled out a cellophane wrapper protruding from the opening of one of the gloves. He made an opening on one of the cellophane wrappers and took several grams of the contents thereof.

- Job Reyes forthwith prepared a letter reporting the shipment to the NBI and requesting a laboratory examination of the samples he extracted from the cellophane wrapper.

- He brought the letter and a sample of appellant's shipment to the Narcotics Section of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), at about 1:30 o'clock in the afternoon of that date, i.e., August 14, 1987. He was interviewed by the Chief of Narcotics Section. Job Reyes informed the NBI that the rest of the shipment was still in his office. Therefore, Job Reyes and three (3) NBI agents, and a photographer, went to the Reyes' office at Ermita, Manila (tsn, p. 30, October 6, 1987).

- Job Reyes brought out the box in which appellant's packages were placed and, in the presence of the NBI agents, opened the top flaps, removed the styro-foam and took out the cellophane wrappers from inside the gloves. Dried marijuana leaves were found to have been contained inside the cellophane wrappers

- The package which allegedly contained books was likewise

opened by Job Reyes. He discovered that the package contained bricks or cake-like dried marijuana leaves. The package which allegedly contained tabacalera cigars was also opened. It turned out that dried marijuana leaves were neatly stocked underneath the cigars

- The NBI agents made an inventory and took charge of the box and of the contents thereof, after signing a "Receipt" acknowledging custody of the said effects.

- Thereafter, an Information was filed against appellant for violation of RA 6425, otherwise known as the Dangerous Drugs Act.

ISSUE:

- Whether or not the lower court erred in admitting in evidence the illegally searched and seized objects

HELD:

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- Following the exclusionary rule laid down in Mapp v. Ohio, this Court, in Stonehill v. Diokno, declared as inadmissible any evidence obtained by virtue of a defective search and seizure warrant, abandoning in the process the ruling earlier adopted in Moncado v. People's Court wherein the admissibility of evidence was not affected by the illegality of its seizure. The 1973 Charter (Sec. 4 [2], Art. IV) constitutionalized the Stonehill ruling and is carried over up to the present with the advent of the 1987 Constitution.

- It must be noted, however, that in all those cases adverted to, the evidence so obtained were invariably procured by the State acting through the medium of its law enforcers or other authorized government agencies. On the other hand, the case at bar assumes a peculiar character since the evidence sought to be excluded was primarily discovered and obtained by a private person, acting in a private capacity and without the intervention and participation of State authorities. Hence, the accused/appellant cannot validly claim that his constitutional right against unreasonable searches and seizure has been violated. An act of a private individual, allegedly in violation of appellant’s constitutional rights CANNOT be invoked against the State.

- Records of the case clearly indicate that it was Mr. Job Reyes, the proprietor of the forwarding agency, who made search/inspection of the packages. Said inspection was reasonable and a standard operating procedure on the part of Mr. Reyes as a precautionary measure before delivery of packages to the Bureau of Customs or the Bureau of Posts.

- It must be recalled that after Reyes opened the box containing the illicit cargo, he took samples of the same to the NBI and later summoned the agents to his place of business. Thereafter, he opened the parcel containing the rest of the shipment and entrusted the care and custody thereof to the NBI agents. Clearly, the NBI agents made no search and seizure, much less an illegal one, contrary to the postulate of accused/appellant.

- if the search is made at the behest or initiative of the proprietor of a private establishment for its own and private purposes, as in the case at bar, and without the intervention

of police authorities, the right against unreasonable search and seizure cannot be invoked for only the act of private individual, not the law enforcers, is involved. In sum, the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures cannot be extended to acts committed by private individuals so as to bring it within the ambit of alleged unlawful intrusion by the government.

[G.R. No. 107383. February 20, 1996.]CECILIA ZULUETA, petitioner, vs. COURT OF APPEALS and ALFREDO MARTIN, respondents.

FACTSPetitioner Cecilia Zulueta is the wife of respondent Alfredo Martin. On March 26, 1982, petitioner entered the clinic of respondent, a doctor of medicine, and in the presence of her mother, a driver and respondent’s secretary, forcibly opened the drawers and cabinet in her husband’s clinic and took 157 documents consisting of private correspondence between respondent and his alleged paramours, greetings cards, cancelled checks, diaries, respondent’s passport, and photographs. The documents and papers were seized for use in evidence in a case for legal separation and for disqualification from the practice of medicine which petitioner had filed against her respondent

Respondent brought an action for the recovery of the documents and papers, and for damages against petitioner with the RTC of Manila.

RTC rendered judgment in favor of respondent. It declared respondent “the capital/exclusive owner of the properties described in paragraph 3 of plaintiff’s Complaint or those further described in the Motion to Return and Suppress” and ordering Cecilia Zulueta and any person acting in her behalf to immediately return the properties to Dr. Martin and to pay him damages. The writ of preliminary injunction earlier issued was made final and petitioner Cecilia Zulueta and her attorneys and representatives were enjoined from “using or submitting/admitting as evidence” the documents and papers in question.

CA affirmed RTC, hence this petition.

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ISSUEWON the Court's ruling in Alfredo Martin v Alfonso Felix, Jr. applies to this case, making the said documents and papers admissible in evidence

RULINGNot applicable. The case against Atty. Felix, Jr (Martin v Felix, Jr) was for disbarment. Among other things, respondent, as complainant in that case, charged that in using the documents in evidence (in the legal separation and disqualification from the practice of medicine cases), Atty. Felix Jr committed malpractice or gross misconduct because of the injunctive order of the TC. The acquittal of Atty. Felix, Jr. in the administrative case amounts to no more than a declaration that his use of the documents and papers for the purpose of securing Dr. Martin’s admission as to their genuiness and authenticity did not constitute a violation of the injunctive order of the trial court. By no means does the decision in that case establish the admissibility of the documents and papers in question.

If Atty. Felix, Jr. was acquitted of the charge of violating the writ of preliminary injunction issued by the trial court, it was only because, at the time he used the documents and papers, enforcement of the order of the trial court was temporarily restrained by this Court. The TRO issued by this Court was eventually lifted as the petition for certiorari filed by petitioner against the trial court’s order was dismissed and, therefore, the prohibition against the further use of the documents and papers became effective again.

Indeed the documents and papers in question are inadmissible in evidence. The constitutional injunction declaring “the privacy of communication and correspondence [to be] inviolable” is no less applicable simply because it is the wife (who thinks herself aggrieved by her husband’s infidelity) who is the party against whom the constitutional provision is to be enforced. The only exception to the prohibition in the Constitution is if there is a “lawful order [from a] court or when public safety or order requires otherwise, as prescribed by law.” Any violation of this provision renders the evidence obtained inadmissible “for any purpose in any proceeding.”

The intimacies between husband and wife do not justify any one of them in breaking the drawers and cabinets of the other and in ransacking them for any telltale evidence of marital infidelity. A person, by contracting marriage, does not shed his/her integrity or his right to privacy as an individual and the constitutional protection is ever available to him or to her.

The law insures absolute freedom of communication between the spouses by making it privileged. Neither husband nor wife may testify for or against the other without the consent of the affected spouse while the marriage subsists. Neither may be examined without the consent of the other as to any communication received in confidence by one from the other during the marriage, save for specified exceptions. But one thing is freedom of communication; quite another is a compulsion for each one to share what one knows with the other. And this has nothing to do with the duty of fidelity that each owes to the other.

PETITION DENIED FOR LACK OF MERIT.

OSCAR VILLANUEVA vs. HON. JUDGE JOSE R. QUERUBIN, Presiding Judge, Court of First Instance of Negros Occidental, and PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINESG.R. No. L-26177 December 27, 1972FERNANDO, J.

Topic: Search and Seizure - Constitutional and statutory boundaries; limitations on State action - Nature of right protected; waiver of protected right

Facts: After due and appropriate proceedings, Judge Querubin issued a search warrant which resulted into a raid of Villanueva’s house by the Philippine Constabulary. The raiding party was able to arrest 8 participants in the game of "Monte" held in one of the rooms of the house. Among the gambling paraphernalia seized during the raid is cash in the amount of P10,570.00, which the raiding party submitted to the court. The City Fiscal of Bacolod City then filed an information for Violation of Art. 195 of the RPC (Gambling) against the 8 apprehended persons. All the accused pleaded guilty and were convicted by the City Court. Upon

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recommendation of the Fiscal, however, only the amount of P220.00 was ordered forfeited in favor of the government and the amount of P10,350.00 was ordered to be returned to Villanueva, the owner of the house, who issued the receipt for the amount with the condition that he will return the money if the higher authorities will require the return of the said amount. Thereafter, Judge Querubin issued an order requiring Villanueva "to return and deliver to the Provincial Commander, Bacolod City, the amount of P10,350.00 and the wooden container, relying on Philips vs. Municipal Mayor in saying that the Court of First Instance that issued the search warrant has jurisdiction over the seized items.

Villanueva contends that the lower court was without jurisdiction, and that the matter had become moot and academic, because the money was spent in good faith by him for the payment of the wages of his laborers. He also relied on his alleged rights as owner. He argued that while he agreed to return the money by 'legal orders', this cannot be considered as a limitation on his right of ownership, because when an agreement conflicts with the provision of law, the latter must prevail. He then issued a certiorari and prohibition proceeding before the SC arguing that such order of return would violate his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Issue: W/N there is a violation of petitioner’s right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Ruling: There is NONE.

The validity of the search warrant and the subsequent raid was never questioned. In his petition, he relied solely on his ownership rights. He failed to recognize the search and seizure rules in The Rules of Court, which made clear what is to be done after the seizure of the property:

The officer must forthwith deliver the property to the municipal judge or judge of the city court or of the Court of First Instance which issued the warrant, together with a true inventory thereof duly verified by oath. The legal custody was therefore appropriately with respondent Judge, who did authorize the issuance of such search warrant.

Had he entertained doubts as to the validity of the issuance of the search warrant or the manner in which it was executed, he

would be called upon to establish such a claim in court. He could rely on authoritative doctrines to seek a judicial declaration of any illegal taint that he could, with plausibility, assert. He failed to do such.

Moreover, in his assertion of mere ownership rights, what he would conveniently ignore was the fact that the seizure thereof was under a valid search warrant. The very constitutional guarantee relied upon does not preclude a search in one's home and the seizure of one's papers and effects as long as the element of reasonableness is not lacking. It cannot be correctly maintained then that just because the money seized did belong to petitioner, its return to the court that issued the search warrant could be avoided when precisely what the law requires is that it be deposited therein. As a matter of fact, what lacks the element of legality is the continued possession by petitioner. Resort to a higher tribunal then to nullify what was done by respondent Judge is futile and unavailing.

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JOSE BURGOS, SR., JOSE BURGOS, JR., BAYANI SORIANO and J. BURGOS MEDIA SERVICES, INC. v. THE CHIEF OF STAFF, ARMED FORCES OF THE PHILIPPINES, THE CHIEF, PHILIPPINE CONSTABULARY, THE CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER, PRESIDENTIAL SECURITY COMMAND, THE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL, ET AL.

26 December 1984 | Escolin, J.

NATURE: Petition for certiorari, prohibition and mandamus with preliminary mandatory and prohibitory injunction to review the validity of the issued search warrants by the judge of the Court of First Instance of Rizal (Quezon City)

FACTS: Ps assail the validity of two search warrants issued by R Judge Ernani Cruz-Paño, which subjected the premises of the "Metropolitan Mail" and "We Forum" newspapers to search of office and printing machines, equipment, paraphernalia, motor vehicles and other articles used in the printing, publication and distribution of said newspapers, as well as numerous papers, documents, books and other written literature alleged to be in the possession & control of P Jose Burgos, Jr. (publisher-editor of the "We Forum" newspaper). They also pray for the return of the

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seized articles and that Rs be enjoined from using such as evidence in the Criminal Case against P Jose Burgos, Jr.

At the hearing on 7 July 1983, the OSG manifested that Rs "will not use the aformentioned articles as evidence in the aforementioned case until final resolution of the legality of the seizure", thereby rendering the prayer for preliminary prohibitory injunction moot and academic.

ISSUES:

1) W/N Ps should have sought the quashal of the warrant before R judge prior to seeking relief from the SC

2) W/N Ps are barred by laches as it took them 6 months to file this petition

3) W/N Ps are estopped from challenging the validity of the warrants

4) W/N the search warrants were validly issued

5) W/N the search warrants may be annulled on the ground that P did not own some of the property seized

HELD:

1) Yes, but the Court chose to take cognizance of the petition in view of the seriousness and urgency of the constitutional issues raised, not to mention the public interest generated by the search, which was televised in Channel 7 and widely publicized in all metropolitan dailies. The existence of this special circumstance justifies this Court to exercise its inherent power to suspend its rules.

2) No, laches may not be imputed to a party who tried to exhaust all extrajudicial efforts before going to court to ask for quashal of search warrant. Laches is failure or negligence for an unreasonable and unexplained length of time to do that which, by exercising due diligence, could or should have been done earlier. It is negligence or omission to assert a right within a reasonable time, warranting a presumption that the party entitled to assert it either has abandoned it or declined to assert it. The SC excused the 6-month lapse of instituting the petition impugning the validity of the search warrants as the extrajudicial efforts exerted by

them quite evidently negate the notion that they had abandoned their right to the possession of the seized property. As soon as they could, Ps sent a letter to President Marcos, through counsel Antonio Coronet, asking the return at least of the printing equipment and vehicles. And after such a letter had been sent, through Col. Balbino V. Diego, Chief Intelligence and Legal Officer of the Presidential Security Command, they were further encouraged to hope that the latter would yield the desired results. After waiting in vain for five months, petitioners finally decided to come to Court.

3) The Court does not follow this logic. As the documents lawfully belong to P, he can do whatever he pleases with them within legal bounds. The fact that he has used them as evidence does not and cannot in any way affect the validity or invalidity of the search warrants assailed in this petition.

4) NO

a. Existence of Probable Cause

Probable cause for a search is defined as such facts and circumstances which would lead a reasonably discreet and prudent man to believe that an offense has been committed and that the objects sought in connection with the offense are in the place sought to be searched. And when the search warrant applied for is directed against a newspaper publisher or editor in connection with the publication of subversive materials, as in the case at bar, the application and/or its supporting affidavits must contain a specification, stating with particularity the alleged subversive material he has published or is intending to publish. The Court ruled that the descriptions used in the two warrants were mere generalizations that do not satisfy the requirement of specificity.

The broad statement in Col. Abadilla's application that petitioner "is in possession or has in his control printing equipment and other paraphernalia, news publications and other documents which were used and are all continuously being used as a means of committing the offense of subversion punishable under Presidential Decree 885, as

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amended ..." is a mere conclusion of law and does not satisfy the requirements of probable cause. Bereft of such particulars as would justify a finding of the existence of probable cause, said allegation cannot serve as basis for the issuance of a search warrant and it was a grave error for respondent judge to have done so. Equally insufficient as basis for the determination of probable cause is the statement contained in the joint affidavit of Alejandro M. Gutierrez and Pedro U. Tango, "that the evidence gathered and collated by our unit clearly shows that the premises above- mentioned and the articles and things above-described were used and are continuously being used for subversive activities in conspiracy with, and to promote the objective of, illegal organizations such as the Light-a-Fire Movement, Movement for Free Philippines, and April 6 Movement."

In mandating that "no warrant shall issue except upon probable cause to be determined by the judge, ... after examination under oath or affirmation of the complainant and the witnesses he may produce; the Constitution requires no less than personal knowledge by the complainant or his witnesses of the facts upon which the issuance of a search warrant may be justified. In Alvarez v. Court of First Instance, this Court ruled that "the oath required must refer to the truth of the facts within the personal knowledge of the petitioner or his witnesses, because the purpose thereof is to convince the committing magistrate, not the individual making the affidavit and seeking the issuance of the warrant, of the existence of probable cause." As couched, the quoted averment in said joint affidavit filed before respondent judge hardly meets the test of sufficiency established by this Court in Alvarez case.

b. Examination under oath or affirmation of the applicant and his witnesses (as mandated by Section IV, Article 3 of the 1973 Constitution and Section 4, Rule 126 of the Rules of Court)

This issue has been rendered moot and academic as P already conceded during the 9 August 1983 hearing that an examination has indeed been conducted by R judge of Col. Abadilla and his witnesses.

c. On the second search warrant, which allegedly pinpointed the same place described in the first search warrant

This defect is obviously a typographical error as two search warrants were applied for and issued. The purpose and intent were to search two distinct premises. It would be absurd and illogical for R judge to have issued two warrants intended for one and the same place. The addresses were specifically set forth in the application, and since it was Col. Abadilla himself who headed the team which executed the search warrants, the ambiguity that might have arisen by reason of the typo error is more apparent than real.

In the determination of whether a search warrant describes the premises to be searched with sufficient particularity, it has been held "that the executing officer's prior knowledge as to the place intended in the warrant is relevant. This would seem to be especially true where the executing officer is the affiant on whose affidavit the warrant had issued, and when he knows that the judge who issued the warrant intended the building described in the affidavit, And it has also been said that the executing officer may look to the affidavit in the official court file to resolve an ambiguity in the warrant as to the place to be searched."

5) No. Ownership is not essential to the validity of search and seizure. Section 2, Rule 126 of the Rules of Court does not require that the property to be seized should be owned by the person against whom the search warrant is directed. It may or may not be owned by him. In fact, under subsection [b] of the above-quoted Section 2, one of the properties that may be seized is stolen property. Necessarily, stolen property must be owned by one other than the person in whose possession it may be at the time of the search and seizure. Ownership, therefore, is of no consequence, and it is sufficient that the person against whom the warrant is directed has control or possession of the property sought to be seized, as petitioner Jose Burgos, Jr. was alleged to have in relation to the articles and property seized under the warrants.

IN VIEW OF THE FOREGOING, Search Warrants Nos. 20-82[a] and 20-82[b] issued by respondent judge on December 7, 1982 are

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hereby declared null and void and are accordingly set aside. The prayer for a writ of mandatory injunction for the return of the seized articles is hereby granted and all articles seized thereunder are hereby ordered released to petitioners. No costs.

Kyllo vs US

Facts: Suspicious that marijuana was being grown in petitioner Kyllo's home in a triplex, agents used a thermal-imaging device to scan the triplex to determine if the amount of heat emanating from it was consistent with the high-intensity lamps typically used for indoor marijuana growth. Thermal imagers detect infrared radiation, which virtually all objects emit but which is not visible to the naked eye.

The scan of Kyllo's home took only a few minutes and was performed from the passenger seat of Agent Elliott's vehicle across the street. The scan showed that the roof over the garage and a side wall of petitioner's home were relatively hot compared to the rest of the home and substantially warmer than neighboring homes in the triplex. Agent Elliott concluded that petitioner was using halide lights to grow marijuana in his house, which indeed he was. Based on tips from informants, utility bills, and the thermal imaging, a Federal Magistrate Judge issued a warrant authorizing a search of petitioner's home, and the agents found an indoor growing operation involving more than 100 plants. Petitioner was indicted on one count of manufacturing marijuana. He unsuccessfully moved to suppress the evidence seized from his home and then entered a conditional guilty plea.

The Ninth Circuit ultimately affirmed, upholding the thermal imaging on the ground that Kyllo had shown no subjective expectation of privacy because he had made no attempt to conceal the heat escaping from his home. Even if he had, ruled the court, there was no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy because the thermal imager “did not expose any intimate details of Kyllo's life, only amorphous hot spots on his home's exterior.”

Issue: WoN the use of a thermal-imaging device aimed at a private home from a public street to detect relative amounts of

heat within the home constitutes a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

Held/Ratio: Yes.

Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a "search" and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.

In the case, the criterion is re the minimal expectation of privacy that exists, and that is acknowledged to be reasonable. To withdraw protection of this minimum expectation would be to permit police technology to erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. Thus, obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the home's interior that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical "intrusion into a constitutionally protected area," constitutes a search-at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. This assures preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted.

Based on this criterion, the information obtained by the thermal imager in this case was the product of a search. The Court rejects the Government's argument that the thermal imaging must be upheld because it detected only heat radiating from the home's external surface. Such a mechanical interpretation of the Fourth Amendment was rejected in Katz, where the eavesdropping device in question picked up only sound waves that reached the exterior of the phone booth to which it was attached. Reversing that approach would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology-including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home. Also rejected is the Government's contention that the thermal imaging was constitutional because it did not detect "intimate details." Such an approach would be wrong in principle because, in the sanctity of the home, all details are intimate details. It would also be impractical in application, failing to provide a workable accommodation between law enforcement needs and Fourth Amendment interests.

Since the Thermovision imaging was an unlawful search, it will remain for the District Court to determine whether, without the

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evidence it provided, the search warrant issued in this case was supported by probable cause.

________________________________________________________

CALIFORNIA V CIRAOLO

FACTS: The Santa Clara, Cal., police received an anonymous telephone tip that marijuana was growing in respondent's backyard, which was enclosed by a 6-foot outer fence and a 10-foot inner fence and shielded from view at ground level. Officers who were trained in marijuana identification secured a private airplane, flew over respondent's house at an altitude of 1,000 feet within navigable airspace, and readily identified marijuana plants growing in the yard. A search warrant was later obtained on the basis of one of the officer's naked-eye observations; a photograph of the surrounding area taken from the airplane was attached as an exhibit. The warrant was executed, and marijuana plants were seized.

Defense:  the flyover "was not the result of a routine patrol conducted for any other legitimate law enforcement or public safety objective, but was undertaken for the specific purpose of observing this particular enclosure within respondent’s CURTILAGE. At common law, the curtilage is the area to which extends the intimate activity associated with the `sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life.

After the California trial court denied respondent's motion to suppress the evidence of the search, he pleaded guilty to a charge of cultivation of marijuana. The California Court of Appeal reversed on the ground that the warrantless aerial observation of respondent's yard violated the Fourth Amendment.

ISSUE: W/N an aerial naked-eye observation violates the Fourth Amendment

HELD: The Fourth Amendment was not violated by the naked-eye aerial observation of respondent's backyard.

The touchstone of Fourth Amendment analysis is whether a person has a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy, which involves the two inquiries of 1) whether the individual manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in the

object of the challenged search, and 2) whether society is willing to recognize that expectation as reasonable (Katz v. United States). In pursuing the second inquiry, the test of legitimacy is not whether the individual chooses to conceal assertedly "private activity," BUT whether the government's intrusion infringes upon the personal and societal values protected by the Fourth Amendment.

1 st test Clearly - and understandably - respondent has met the test of manifesting his own subjective intent and desire to maintain privacy as to his unlawful agricultural pursuits.

2 nd test On the record here, respondent's expectation of privacy from all observations of his backyard was unreasonable. That the backyard and its crop were within the "curtilage" of respondent's home did not itself bar all police observation.

The mere fact that an individual has taken measures to restrict some views of his activities does not preclude an officer's observation from a public vantage point where he has a right to be and which renders the activities clearly visible. The police observations here took place within public navigable airspace, in a physically nonintrusive manner. The police were able to observe plants readily discernible to the naked eye as marijuana, and it was irrelevant that the observation from the airplane was directed at identifying the plants and that the officers were trained to recognize marijuana. Any member of the public flying in this airspace who cared to glance down could have seen everything that the officers observed. The Fourth Amendment simply does not require police traveling in the public airways at 1,000 feet to obtain a warrant in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye. ________________________________________________________

Dow Chemical v United StatesNote: For right to privacy, the test employed is the reasonable expectation to privacy test: 1)  the individual must have exhibited a subjective expectation of privacy; and 2) the expectation must be one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.

FACTS: Petitioner operates a 2,000-acre chemical plant

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consisting of numerous covered buildings, with outdoor manufacturing equipment and piping conduits located between the various buildings exposed to visual observation from the air. Petitioner maintains elaborate security around the perimeter of the complex, barring ground-level public views of the area. One day, petitioner denied a request by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for an on-site inspection of the plant. The EPA did not seek an administrative search warrant, but instead employed a commercial aerial photographer, using a standard precision aerial mapping camera, to take photographs of the facility from various altitudes, all of which were within lawful navigable airspace.

The EPA did not inform Dow of the aerial photography. Thus, upon becoming aware of the same, petitioner brought suit i Federal District Court, alleging that EPA's action violated the Fourth Amendment (unreasonable search and seizure) and beyond the EPA's statutory investigative authority. It claimed that the EPA has no authority to use Aerial Photography to implement its authority for site inspection.

The District Court ruled in favor of the petitioner. It limited the issue to whether EPA's "quest for evidence" amounted to a search and whether the same was unreasonable. It ruled that the petitioner had a "reasonable expectation of privacy" as it seeks protect its trade secrets. Thus, the employment of aerial cameras were violative of the petitioner's right to privacy and constitutes unlawful search.

The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that EPA's aerial observation did not exceed its investigatory authority and that the aerial photography of petitioner's plant complex without a warrant was not a search prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. It held that although Dow indeed had a reasonable expectation of privacy, the same is only limited to ground-level intrusions. Dow did not take precautions that would show that it reasonably expected privacy from aerial surveillance.

ISSUE: WON the search of the EPA was valid and does not exceed its statutory authority?

HELD: Yes.

On the issue of EPA’s statutory authority- Congress has vested in EPA certain investigatory and enforcement authority, without spelling out precisely how this authority was to be exercised in all the myriad circumstances that might arise in monitoring matters relating to air and water standards. When Congress invests an agency with enforcement and investigatory authority, it is not necessary to identify explicitly each and every technique that may be used in the course of executing the statutory mission. EPA, as a regulatory and enforcement agency, needs no explicit statutory provision to employ methods of observation commonly available to the public at large: we hold that the use of aerial observation and photography is within EPA's statutory authority.

On the issue of unreasonable search-

Dow argues that the plant complex falls within the curtilage doctrine and not in the open fields doctrine as held in Oliver v United States. Thus its "industrial curtilage" have constitutional protection equivalent to that of the curtilage of a private home. Dow further contends that any aerial photography of this "industrial curtilage" intrudes upon its reasonable expectations of privacy. (open fields doctrine- no protection of those intimate activities that the [Fourth] Amendment is intended to shelter from governmental interference or surveillance; curtilage doctrine- the area immediately surrounding a private house has long been given protection as a place where the occupants have a reasonable and legitimate expectation of privacy that society is prepared to accept).

The curtilage doctrine does not apply. The intimate activities associated with family privacy and the home and its curtilage simply do not reach the outdoor areas or spaces between structures and buildings of a manufacturing plant.

The narrow issue raised by Dow's claim of search and seizure, concerns aerial observation of a 2,000-acre outdoor manufacturing facility without physical entry. It has been held that the Government has "greater latitude to conduct warrantless inspections of commercial property" because "the expectation of privacy that the owner of commercial property enjoys in such property differs significantly from the sanctity accorded an individual's home."

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Unlike a homeowner's interest in his dwelling, "[t]he interest of the owner of commercial property is not one in being free from any inspections." And with regard to regulatory inspections, we have held that "[w]hat is observable by the public is observable, without a warrant, by the Government inspector as well."

In Oliver it was recognized that, in the open field context, "the public and police lawfully may survey lands from the air." Here, EPA was not employing some unique sensory device that, for example, could penetrate the walls of buildings and record conversations in Dow's plants, offices, or laboratories, but rather a conventional, albeit precise, commercial camera commonly used in mapmaking. We conclude that the open areas of an industrial plant complex with numerous plant structures spread over an area of 2,000 acres are not analogous to the "curtilage" of a dwelling for purposes of aerial surveillance such an industrial complex is more comparable to an open field, and, as such, it is open to the view and observation of persons in aircraft lawfully in the public airspace immediately above or sufficiently near the area for the reach of cameras.

The photographs here are not so revealing of intimate details as to raise constitutional concerns. Although they undoubtedly give EPA more detailed information than naked-eye views, they remain limited to an outline of the facility's buildings and equipment. The mere fact that human vision is enhanced somewhat, at least to the degree here, does not give rise to constitutional problems.

We hold that the taking of aerial photographs of an industrial plant complex from navigable airspace is not a search prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.

Obiter: Take into account all of the facts when you recite the case. The ruling solely applies to cases where there is 1) an industrial plant/ building with an open area outside and within its perimeter; 2) the government uses a conventional or commercial camera for aerial surveillance.

If you change any of the above variables the ruling would be different. For example, if the EPA used a highly sophisticated surveillance equipment not generally available to the public,

such as satellite technology, what the EPA did would amount to unlawful search. Another instance would be if one government agency employs an aerial camera for surveillance of a home, that would amount to unlawful search because the “curtilage” doctrine applies.

Hoffa vs United States 385 US 293 (1966)

Brief Fact Summary.  Petitioners were convicted for endeavoring to bribe members of a jury in a previous trial of petitioner Hoffa, for violating the Taft-Hartley Act, which resulted in a hung jury. Substantial information and evidence were given in the prosecution by Partin, a paid government informer, who, throughout the Taft-Hartley trial, was repeatedly in Hoffa's company -- in Hoffa's hotel suite, the hotel lobby, and elsewhere. The defendant (Hoffa) often conferred with his attorneys in the room. The informant was there in order to obtain information from the defendant to be used during a second trial for witness tampering. The Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions, and this Court granted certiorari on the question whether the use of evidence furnished by the informer rendered the convictions invalid.

Synopsis of Rule of Law. The conduct “by the Government by means of deceptively placing a secret informer in the quarters and councils of a defendant during one criminal trial [does not] violate the defendant’s Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights that suppression of such evidence is required in a subsequent trial of the same defendant on a different charge.”

Facts:

James Hoffa (”Hoffa”) was charged with violating a provision of the Taft-Hartley Act. He was tried in the autumn of 1962 (”the Test Fleet trial”). The Test Fleet trial ended with a hung jury.

Hoffa and various others were convicted in 1964 of bribing members of the jury during the Test Fleet trial. The Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions.

A substantial element in the Government's, proof that led to the convictions of these four petitioners (Hoffa, King, Parks, and Campbell) was contributed by a witness named Edward

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Partin, who testified to several incriminating statements which he said petitioners Hoffa and King had made in his presence during the course of the Test Fleet trial.

James Hoffa was president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. During the course of the trial, he occupied a three-room suite in the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Nashville. Also, Hoffa’s attorneys were in the room. One of his constant companions throughout the trial was the petitioner King, president of the Nashville local of the Teamsters Union. Edward Partin, a resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and a local Teamsters Union official there, made repeated visits to Nashville during the period of the trial. On these visits he frequented the Hoffa hotel suite, and was continually in the company of Hoffa and his associates, including King, in and around the hotel suite, the hotel lobby, the courthouse, and elsewhere in Nashville. During this period, Partin made frequent reports to a federal agent named Sheridan concerning conversations he said Hoffa and King had had with him and with each other, disclosing endeavors to bribe members of the Test Fleet jury. Partin's reports and his subsequent testimony at the petitioners' trial unquestionably contributed, directly or indirectly, to the convictions of all four of the petitioners. Partin made various reports to a federal agents about conversations “he said Hoffa and King had had with him and with each other, disclosing endeavors to bribe members of the Test Fleet jury.” Federal agents asked Partin to look out for Hoffa attempting to tamper with the Test Fleet jury.

The chain of circumstances which led Partin to be in Nashville during the Test Fleet trial extended back at least to September of 1962. At that time, Partin was in jail in Baton Rouge on a state criminal charge. He was also under a federal indictment for embezzling union funds, and other indictments for state offenses were pending against him. Between that time and Partin's initial visit to Nashville on October 22, he was released on bail on the state criminal charge, and proceedings under the federal indictment were postponed. On October 8, Partin telephoned Hoffa in Washington, D.C., to discuss local union matters and Partin's difficulties with the authorities. In the course of this conversation, Partin asked if he could see Hoffa to confer about these problems, and Hoffa acquiesced. Partin again

called Hoffa on October 18, and arranged to meet him in Nashville. During this period, Partin also consulted on several occasions with federal law enforcement agents, who told him that Hoffa might attempt to tamper with the Test Fleet jury and asked him to be on the lookout in Nashville for such attempts, and to report to the federal authorities any evidence of wrongdoing that he discovered. Partin agreed to do so.

After the Test Fleet trial, Partin’s wife received money from the government and all charges against Partin were dropped.

Issue. (grant of certiorari was limited to single issue) WON Gov't use, in this case, of evidence supplied by Partin operated to invalidate these convictions OR “Whether evidence obtained by the Government by means of deceptively placing a secret informer in the quarters and councils of a defendant during one criminal trial so violates the defendant’s Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights that suppression of such evidence is required in a subsequent trial of the same defendant on a different charge[?]” latter phrased by defendants; At the threshold, the Government takes issue with the way this question is worded, refusing to concede that it "placed' the informer anywhere, much less that it did so `deceptively.'"

Held. 

The use of a secret informer is not per se unconstitutional, and the use of Partin in this case did not violate due process requirements, his veracity having been fully subject to the safeguards of cross-examination and the trial court's instructions to the jury.

The majority first observed that Partin was a government informant as soon as he arrived in Nashville and that the government compensated him for his services as such.

RE FOURTH AMENDMENT: No rights under the Fourth Amendment were violated by the failure of Partin to disclose his role as a government informer. When Hoffa made incriminating statements to or in the presence of Partin, his invitee, he relied not on the security of the hotel room, but on his misplaced confidence that Partin would not reveal his wrongdoing.

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Hoffa: only by violating the petitioner's rights under the Fourth Amendment was Partin able to hear the petitioner's incriminating statements in the hotel suite, and that Partin's testimony was therefore inadmissible under the exclusionary rule of Weeks v. United States,232 U. S. 383. The argument is that Partin's failure to disclose his role as a government informer vitiated the consent that the petitioner gave to Partin's repeated entries into the suite, and that, by listening to the petitioner's statements Partin conducted an illegal "search" for verbal evidence.

SC: Where the argument falls is in its misapprehension of the fundamental nature and scope of Fourth Amendment protection. What the Fourth Amendment protects is the security a man relies upon when he places himself or his property within a constitutionally protected area, be it his home or his office, his hotel room or his automobile. There, he is protected from unwarranted governmental intrusion. And when he puts something in his filing cabinet, in his desk drawer, or in his pocket, he has the right to know it will be secure from an unreasonable search or an unreasonable seizure. So it was that the Fourth Amendment could not tolerate the warrantless search of the hotel room in Jeffers, the purloining of the petitioner's private papers in Gouled, or the surreptitious electronic surveillance in Silverman. In the present case, however, it is evident that no interest legitimately protected by the Fourth Amendment is involved. It is obvious that the petitioner was not relying on the security of his hotel suite when he made the incriminating statements to Partin or in Partin's presence. Partin did not enter the suite by force or by stealth. He was not a surreptitious eavesdropper. Partin was in the suite by invitation, and every conversation which he heard was either directed to him or knowingly carried on in his presence. The petitioner, in a word, was not relying on the security of the hotel room; he was relying upon his misplaced confidence that Partin would not reveal his wrongdoing. As counsel for the petitioner himself points out, some of the communications with Partin did not take place in the suite at all, but in the "hall of the hotel," in the "Andrew Jackson Hotel lobby," and "at the courthouse."Neither this Court nor any member of it has ever expressed the view that the Fourth Amendment protects a wrongdoer's misplaced belief that a

person to whom he voluntarily confides his wrongdoing will not reveal it. Indeed, the Court unanimously rejected that very contention less than four years ago in Lopez v. United States. As such, no right protected by the Fourth Amendment was violated.

RE FIFTH AMENDMENT: Hoffa’s Fifth Amendment claim that he was compelled to be a witness against himself was also without merit. There was no type of compulsion or coercion. No claim has been or could be made that the petitioner's incriminating statements were the product of any sort of coercion, legal or factual. The petitioner's conversations with Partin and in Partin's presence were wholly voluntary. For that reason, if for no other, it is clear that no right protected by the Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination was violated in this case.

RE SIXTH AMENDMENT: There was no violation of any Sixth Amendment right to counsel in this case. (a) A Sixth Amendment violation resulting from Partin's reporting to the Government on the activities of Hoffa's counsel in preparing the defense of the Taft-Hartley trial might have invalidated any conviction in that trial. But the conviction in the subsequent trial for the different offense of endeavoring to bribe jurors was not rendered invalid by the admission of Hoffa's incriminating statements heard by Partin, none of which were made in the presence of counsel or in connection with the legitimate defense of the Taft-Hartley trial. (b) The Government was not obliged to arrest Hoffa when it first had probable cause to do so, though his admissions without counsel after arrest might have been barred, since law enforcement officers have no duty to halt a crime investigation when they have minimum evidence to establish probable cause.

Hoffa also made two Sixth Amendment arguments found to be without merit.

o First, Hoffa argued that his “lawyers used his suite as a place to confer with him and with each other, to interview witnesses, and to plan the following day’s trial strategy.” Accordingly, he argued that “Partin’s presence in and around the suite violated the petitioner’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel because an essential ingredient thereof is the

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right of a defendant and his counsel to prepare for trial without intrusion upon their confidential relationship by an agent of the Government, the defendant’s trial adversary.” In discounting this argument, the majority observed “it is far from clear to what extent Partin was present at conversations or conferences of the petitioner’s counsel.”

o Also, the majority distinguished two cases by observing “[Hoffa's] statements related to the commission of a quite separate offense

CALIFORNIA vs GREENWOOD

486 U.S. 35 May 16, 1988 J. White

FACTS:

Investigator Stracner learned that a criminal suspect had informed a federal drug enforcement agent in February 1984 that a truck filled with illegal drugs was en route to the Laguna Beach address at which Greenwood resided.

In addition, a neighbor complained of heavy vehicular traffic late at night in front of Greenwood's single-family home. The neighbor reported that the vehicles remained at Greenwood's house for only a few minutes. Stracner investigated and did notice the heavy vehicular traffic and a truck suspected to contain narcotics pass by Greenwood’s house.

On April 6, 1984, Stracner asked the neighborhood's regular trash collector to pick up the plastic garbage bags that Greenwood had left on the curb in front of his house and to turn the bags over to her without mixing their contents with garbage from other houses. The trash collector cleaned his truck bin of other refuse, collected the garbage bags from the street in front of Greenwood's house, and turned the bags over to Stracner. The officer searched through the rubbish and found items indicative of narcotics use. She recited the information that she had gleaned from

the trash search in an affidavit in support of a warrant to search Greenwood's home.

Police officers encountered both respondents at the house later that day when they arrived to execute the warrant. The police discovered quantities of cocaine and hashish during their search of the house. Respondents were arrested on felony narcotics charges. They subsequently posted bail.

Investigator Raheuser continued to receive reports of many late-night visitors at Greenwood’s house so the former again obtained Greenwood’s trash the same way Stracner did before. There was evidence of narcotics use again so he procured another search warrant and found more narcotics and evidence of narcotics trafficking. Greenwood was arrested again.

The Superior Court and Court of Appeal both dismissed the charges against Greenwood because warrantless trash searches violate the Fourth Amendment. They would not have found probable cause for a search warrant for his house if they had not searched his trash.

ISSUE: WON warrantless search and seizure of garbage bags would violate the Fourth Amendment – No. The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home.The investigators were validly able to search and seize the garbage bags left behind.

HELD:

We observed that "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties." The third person in this case, the garbage collector, had the free use of the trash once in it was left at the curb.

The warrantless search and seizure of the garbage bags left at the curb outside the Greenwood house would violate the Fourth Amendment only if respondents manifested a subjective expectation of privacy in their garbage that society accepts as objectively reasonable.

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Here, we conclude that respondents exposed their garbage to the public sufficiently to defeat their claim to Fourth Amendment protection. It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public.

Accordingly, having deposited their garbage "in an area particularly suited for public inspection and, in a manner of speaking, public consumption, for the express purpose of having strangers take it,", respondents could have had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items that they discarded.

The police cannot reasonably be expected to avert their eyes from evidence of criminal activity that could have been observed by any member of the public.

The reasonableness of a search for Fourth Amendment purposes does not depend upon privacy concepts embodied in the law of the particular State in which the search occurred; rather, it turns upon the understanding of society as a whole that certain areas deserve the most scrupulous protection from government invasion. There is no such understanding with respect to garbage left for collection at the side of a public street.

Greenwood also anchored his argument on the fact that California state law should stay separate from the federal law but the Court negated this and said the Fourth Amendment does not cover protection against warrantless trash searches.

The Fourth Amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The State of Washington vs. Bradley M. Boland115 Wn.2d 571 (1990) 800 P.2d 1112; J. Dolliver

FACTSSometime in September 1986, both the office of the Prosecuting Attorney for Jefferson County and the Port Townsend City Police Department received anonymous letters alleging defendant Bradley Boland was distributing legend drugs. Legend drugs are drugs of which federal law prohibits distribution without a prescription from a physician. The anonymous letter was accompanied by a brochure containing the names of Health West Products and Boland. Shortly after receiving the letter, the investigating officer attempted to order legend drugs from the defendant through the mail. When defendant received the letter, he responded with a letter stating he did not understand the inquiry. The letter, however, was returned to defendant with a notation stating the addressee did not live at the address given.

The investigating officer applied for a search warrant (based on the letter and brochure) in order to gain access to defendant's power records for the purpose of verifying his address. The warrant was served on November 6, 1986, and defendant's address was subsequently verified.

The police began a series of four warrantless searches of defendant's garbage hoping to locate sufficient evidence to obtain a warrant to search his residence. The other three searches occurred on March 25, April 1, and April 8. Before each of the searches, police officers would observe defendant take his trash out to the corner for collection where he would place his trash can in approximately the same location. The lid of defendant's trash container fit securely on the can, and each time defendant took the can out, he would place a heavy piece of wood on top of the lid. On each occasion, the officers returned to defendant's residence during the night, emptied the contents of the trash can into a plastic bag and transported it to the police station. Once there, the trash was made available to state and federal agents who would examine its contents for evidence of

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drugrelated activities. On at least three of these occasions, such evidence was uncovered.

After inquiring with the Washington State Board of Pharmacy in order to verify defendant did not hold a license to dispense legend drugs, the investigating officer applied for a warrant to search defendant's home. The warrant was issued based on the evidence obtained from defendant's trash and the letter and brochure received from the informant. The police searched defendant's house and seized a large quantity of legend drugs as well as a card of tablets and a bottle containing controlled substances. Defendant was charged with unlawful possession of legend drugs and two counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver.

Defendant filed a motion to suppress the evidence gathered during the search of his house. Defendant argued the evidence was the fruit of the warrantless search of his garbage which violated the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution and Const. art. 1, § 7.

NOTE: Fourth amendment of US Constitution is the federal counterpart of Const. art. 1, § 7

TC granted the motion, stating that in light of Const. art. 1, § 7, it is clear that a law enforcement officer's examination of the contents of a garbage container placed curbside for collection is an unconstitutional intrusion into a person's private affairs, particularly when the city ordinance requires the container to be removed from the person's property and placed at the side of the street for ease of collection. The trial court also ordered suppression of the evidence seized in defendant's home since, without the evidence taken from the garbage, no probable cause existed upon which to base the search warrant. The trial court subsequently ordered the charges against defendant be dropped.

CA revered TC decision.

ISSUEWON a reasonable expectation of privacy exists in garbage

HELDYES.

1) Defendant cites one local ordinance, the Port Townsend Ordinance, which requires him to place his trash cans in a location "where they will be convenient for the collector." Although the Court of Appeals correctly points out the Port Townsend Ordinance was intended to protect the health of the general public rather than individual privacy interests in garbage, we find this irrelevant. One can reasonably infer from this ordinance that only trash collectors and not others will handle one's trash. It would be improper to require that in order to maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in one's trash that the owner must forgo use of ordinary methods of trash collection.

2) Const. art. 1, § 7 provides: No person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law.

Violation of a right of privacy under this provision turns on whether the State has unreasonably intruded into a person's "private affairs.” The difference between the right of privacy under Const. art. 1, § 7 and the Fourth Amendment has been explained as follows: Const. art. 1, § 7 analysis encompasses those legitimate privacy expectations protected by the Fourth Amendment, but is not confined to the subjective privacy expectations of modern citizens who, due to well publicized advances in surveillance technology, are learning to expect diminished privacy in many aspects of their lives. Rather, it focuses on those privacy interests which citizens of this state have held, and should be entitled to hold, safe from governmental trespass absent a warrant.

Certain governmental intrusion does constitute a violation of an individual's private affairs under Const. art. 1, § 7.

3) We find under the facts of this case that defendant Boland's private affairs were unreasonably intruded upon by law enforcement officers when they removed the garbage from his trash can and transported it to the police station in order to make it available to state and federal narcotics agents. Boland's trash was in his can and sitting on the curb in expectation that it would be picked up by a licensed garbage collector. This leads us to the conclusion that it falls squarely within the contemplated meaning of a "private affair". While it may be true an expectation that children, scavengers, or snoops will not sift

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through one's garbage is unreasonable, average persons would find it reasonable to believe the garbage they place in their trash cans will be protected from warrantless governmental intrusion.

4) In rendering our opinion, we acknowledge that the United States Supreme Court has held to the contrary under the Fourth Amendment in California vs. Greenwood. We also recognize that the opinions of the Supreme Court, while not controlling on state courts construing their own constitutions, are nevertheless important guides on the subjects they squarely address. However, we decline to follow federal precedent for two reasons.

a) Greenwood is based in part on the fact that the court felt society is unwilling to accept as objectively reasonable a privacy expectation in garbage left outside the curtilage of the home for collection. This court has previously held the location of a search is indeterminative when inquiring into whether the State has unreasonably intruded into an individual's private affairs. Thus, the fact defendant placed his garbage at the curb rather than in his backyard has no bearing on whether an unreasonable intrusion into his private affairs occurred.

b) The reasoning upon which Greenwood is based conflicts directly with this court's interpretation of Const. art. 1, § 7.

5) The proper and regulated collection of garbage, as evidenced by ordinances such as Port Townsend's is necessary to the proper functioning of modern society. While a person must reasonably expect a licensed trash collector will remove the contents of his trash can, this expectation does not also infer an expectation of governmental intrusion.

6) The violation of a constitutional immunity automatically implies exclusion of the evidence seized.

DISPOSITIONCA decision REVERSED.

Florida vs. JardinesNo. 11-564 | March 26, 2013 | J. Scalia

Doctrine: The investigation of Jardines’ home with the help of a drug-sniffing dog was a “search” within the meaning of the

Fourth Amendment. At the Fourth Amendment’s “very core” stands “the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreason-able governmental intrusion.” The porch is part of the home. Furthermore, the officers’ entry into the porch was not consented to.

Nature: Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Florida

Facts: In 2006, Detective Pedraja of the Miami Police received a tip that marijuana was being grown in the home of respondent Joelis Jardines so together with the Drug Enforcement Administration, a joint surveillance team was sent. No one was home so Pedraja approached the house with Detective Bartelt, a trained canine handler who arrived with his drug-sniffing dog.

As the dog approached Jardines’ front porch, he apparently sensed one of the odors he had been trained to detect, and began energetically exploring the area for the strongest point source of that odor. After sniffing the base of the front door, the dog sat, which is the trained behavior upon discovering the odor’s strongest point. Detective Bartelt then pulled the dog away from the door and left the scene after informing Detective Pedraja that there had been a positive alert for narcotics.

On the basis of what he had learned at the home, Detective Pedraja applied for and received a warrant to search the residence. When the warrant was executed later that day, Jardines attempted to flee and was arrested; the search revealed marijuana plants, and he was charged with trafficking in cannabis.     At trial, Jardines moved to suppress the marijuana plants on the ground that the canine investigation was an unreasonable search.

Trial court: granted the motionFlorida Third District Court of Appeal: reversedFlorida Supreme Court: quashed the decision of the Third District Court of Appeal and approved the trial court’s decision to suppress, holding that the use of the trained narcotics dog to investigate Jardines’ home was a Fourth Amendment search unsupported by probable cause, rendering invalid the warrant based upon information gathered in that search.

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Issues: 1. WON using a drug-sniffing dog on a homeowner’s porch

to investigate the contents of the home is a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment

2. WON the search violated Jardines’ right

Held:1. Yes. When it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home

is first among equals. At the Amendment’s “very core” stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.

The area immediately surrounding and associated with the home is treated as part of the home itself for Fourth Amendment purposes. This area around the home is intimately linked to the home, both physically and psychologically, and is where privacy expectations are most heightened. The front porch is the classic exemplar of an area adjacent to the home and to which the activity of home life extends.

2. Yes. The general rule clearly states: “Our law holds the property of every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbor’s close without his leave.” In instant case, no one was home; hence, there was no permission given to the police to conduct the search.

A police officer not armed with a warrant may approach a home and knock, precisely because that is no more than any private citizen might do. But introducing a trained police dog to explore the area around the home in hopes of discovering incriminating evidence is something else. 

The State argues that investigation by a forensic narcotics dog by definition cannot implicate any legitimate privacy interest. The State cites jurisprudence which held, respectively, that canine inspection of luggage in an airport, chemical testing of a substance that had fallen from a parcel in transit, and canine inspection of an automobile during a lawful traffic stop, do not violate the “reasonable expectation of privacy” concept elucidated in Katz vs. US.

But the Court says that the Katz reasonable-expectations test “has been added to, not substituted for,” the traditional property-based understanding of the Fourth Amendment, and so is unnecessary to consider when the government gains evidence by physically intruding on constitutionally protected areas.

That the officers learned what they learned only by physically intruding on Jardines’ property to gather evidence is enough to establish that a search occurred. The government’s use of trained police dogs to investigate the home and its immediate surroundings is a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is therefore affirmed.

ILLINOIS v. ROY I. CABALLES ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF ILLINOIS J. Stevens; January 24, 2005

Illinois State Trooper Daniel Gillette stopped respondent for speeding on an interstate highway. When Gillette radioed the police dispatcher to report the stop, a second trooper, Craig Graham, a member of the Illinois State Police Drug Interdiction Team, overheard the transmission and immediately headed for the scene with his narcotics-detection dog. When they arrived, respondent’s car was on the shoulder of the road and respondent was in Gillette’s vehicle. While Gillette was in the process of writing a warning ticket, Graham walked his dog around respondent’s car. The dog alerted at the trunk. Based on that alert, the officers searched the trunk, found marijuana, and arrested respondent. The entire incident lasted less than 10 minutes.

Respondent was convicted of a narcotics offense and sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment and a $256,136 fine. The trial judge denied his motion to suppress the seized evidence and to quash

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his arrest. He held that the officers had not unnecessarily prolonged the stop and that the dog alert was sufficiently reliable to provide probable cause to conduct the search. Although the Appellate Court affirmed, the Illinois Supreme Court reversed, concluding that because the canine sniff was performed without any “ ‘specific and articulable facts’ ” to suggest drug activity, the use of the dog “unjustifiably enlarg[ed] the scope of a routine traffic stop into a drug investigation.”

Issues: Whether or not police can expand a routine traffic stop into a drug investigation by using a drug-sniffing dog in the absence of individualized suspicion.

Whether or not the use of a drug-sniffing dog in routine traffic stop is a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Whether the Fourth Amendment requires reasonable, articulable suspicion to justify using a drug-detection dog to sniff a vehicle during a legitimate traffic stop.

Held:No. A dog sniff conducted during a concededly lawful traffic stop that reveals no information other than the location of a substance that no individual has any right to possess does not violate the Fourth Amendment.

Conducting a dog sniff would not change the character of a traffic stop that is lawful at its inception and otherwise executed in a reasonable manner, unless the dog sniff itself infringed respondent’s constitutionally protected interest in privacy.

Official conduct that does not “compromise any legitimate interest in privacy” is not a search subject to the Fourth Amendment. It has been held that any interest in possessing contraband cannot be deemed “legitimate,” and thus, governmental conduct that only reveals the possession of contraband “compromises no legitimate privacy interest.” This is because the expectation “that certain facts will not come to the attention of the authorities” is not the same as an interest in “privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable.”

The use of a well-trained narcotics-detection dog–one that "does not expose noncontraband items that otherwise would remain hidden from public view," during a lawful traffic stop, generally does not implicate legitimate privacy interests. In this case, the dog sniff was performed on the exterior of respondent’s car while he was lawfully seized for a traffic violation. Any intrusion on respondent’s privacy expectations does not rise to the level of a constitutionally cognizable infringement.

UNITED STATES v. JONESArgued November 8, 2011; Decided January 23, 2012On Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuitJ. Scalia

In 2004 respondent Antoine Jones, owner and operator of a nightclub in the District of Columbia, came under suspicion of trafficking in narcotics and was made the target of an investigation by a joint FBI and Metropolitan Police Department task force. Officers employed various investigative techniques, including visual surveillance of the nightclub, installation of a camera focused on the front door of the club, and a pen register and wiretap covering Jones’s cellular phone.

Based in part on information gathered from these sources, in 2005 the Government applied to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a warrant authorizing the use of an electronic tracking device on the Jeep Grand Cherokee registered to Jones’s wife. A warrant issued, authorizing installation of the de-vice in the District of Columbia and within 10 days.

On the 11th day, and not in the District of Columbia but in Maryland, agents installed a GPS tracking device on the undercarriage of the Jeep while it was parked in a public parking lot. Over the next 28 days, the Government used the device to track the vehicle’s movements, and once had to replace the device’s battery when the vehicle was parked in a different public lot in Maryland. By means of signals from multiple satellites, the device established the vehicle’s location within 50 to 100 feet, and communicated that location by cellular phone to a Government computer. It relayed more than 2,000 pages of data over the 4-week period.

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It subsequently secured an indictment of Jones and others on drug trafficking conspiracy charges. The District Court suppressed the GPS data obtained while the vehicle was parked at Jones’s residence, but held the remaining data admissible because Jones had no reasonable expectation of privacy when the vehicle was on public streets. Jones was convicted. The D. C. Circuit reversed, concluding that admission of the evidence obtained by warrantless use of the GPS device violated the Fourth Amendment.

Issues:Whether or not installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

Held: Yes. The Government’s attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment

(a) The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Here, the Government’s physical intrusion on an “effect” for the purpose of obtaining information constitutes a “search.” This type of encroachment on an area enumerated in the Amendment would have been considered a search within the meaning of the Amendment at the time it was adopted.

(b) This conclusion is consistent with this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, which until the latter half of the 20th century was tied to common-law trespass. Later cases, which have deviated from that exclusively property-based approach, have applied the analysis of Justice Harlan’s concurrence in Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, which said that the Fourth Amendment protects a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Here, the Court need not address the Government’s contention that Jones had no “reasonable expectation of privacy,” because Jones’s Fourth Amendment rights do not rise or fall with the Katz formulation. At bottom, the Court must “assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was

adopted.” (Kyllo v. United States, 533 U. S. 27). Katz did not repudiate the understanding that the Fourth Amendment embodies a particular concern for government trespass upon the areas it enumerates. The Katz reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test has been added to, but not substituted for, the common-law trespassory test. Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165; Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U. S. 56. United States v. Knotts, 460 U. S. 276, and United States v. Karo, 468 U. S. 705, post-Katz cases rejecting Fourth Amendment challenges to “beepers,” electronic tracking devices representing another form of electronic monitoring, do not foreclose the conclusion that a search occurred here. New York v. Class, 475 U. S. 106, and Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170, also do not support the Government’s position.

(c) The Government argues in the alternative that even if the attachment and use of the device was a search, it was reasonable—and thus lawful—under the Fourth Amendment because “officers had reasonable suspicion, and in-deed probable cause, to believe that [Jones] was a leader in a large-scale cocaine distribution conspiracy.” The Supreme Court had no occasion to consider this argument. The Government did not raise it below, and the D. C. Circuit therefore did not address it, therefore the argument is deemed forfeited.;PEOPLE, appellee, vs. SUSAN CANTON, appellantG.R. No. 148825; December 27, 2002DAVIDE, JR., C.J.

Nature: Appeal from a decision of the Regional Trial Court of Pasay City, Branch 110

Doctrine: RA 6235 Sec. 9 is another exception to the proscription against warrantless searches and seizures. The provision clearly states that the search, unlike in the Terry search, is not limited to weapons. Passengers are also subject to search for prohibited materials or substances.

February 12, 1998 – Susan Canton was at the NAIA, being a departing passenger bound for Saigon, Vietnam. When she passed through the metal detector booth, a beeping sound was emitted. Mylene Cabunoc, a civilian employee of the National Action Committee on Hijacking and Terrorism (NACHT) and the frisker on duty at that time, called her attention and asked her if

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she (Cabunoc) could search her (Canton). Upon frisking Canton, Cabunoc felt something bulging at her abdominal area, and similar packages in front of her genital area and thighs. According to Cabunoc, she noticed that the package contained what felt like rice granules. Cabunoc asked Canton to bring out the packages but Canton refused, saying: “Money, money only”. Cabunoc reported the matter to her supervisor on duty, SPO4 Victorio de los Reyes.

SPO4 de los Reyes instructed Cabunoc to call Customs Examiner Lorna Jalac and to bring Canton to a comfort room for a thorough physical examination. Upon further frisking in the ladies’ room, Cabunoc touched something in front of Canton’s sex organ and she directed Canton to remove her skirt, girdles and panty. Canton obliged and Cabunoc and Jalac discovered three packages (abdominal area, in front of her genital area, and right thigh) individually wrapped and sealed in gray colored packing tape, which Canton voluntarily handed to them.

Cabunoc turned over the packages to SPO4 de los Reyes who then informed Police Superintendent Daniel Santos about the incident. Together with Canton, they brought the gray plastic packs to the customs examination table, opened them, and found white crystalline substances inside, which after laboratory examination yielded positive results for methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu, a regulated drug. For the defense, SPO2 Jerome Cause testified that no investigation was ever conducted on Canton. However, Canton signed a receipt of the following articles seized from her: (1) 3 bags of methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu approximately 1,100 grams; (2) 1 American passport; (3) 1 Continental Micronesia plane ticket; and (4) two panty girdles. SPO2 Cause said that he informed Canton of her rights but admitted that she did not have a counsel when she signed the receipt.

RTC: found Canton guilty beyond reasonable doubt of violating Section 16 Article III of RA 6425, and sentencing her to suffer the penalty of reclusion perpetua and to pay a fine of Php1million.

Issues: Whether or not the warrantless search made on Canton was valid. YES

Held:

Canton’s contentions Supreme Court

TC erred in justifying the warrantless search against her based on the alleged existence of probable cause

The search conducted on Canton was not incidental to a lawful arrest

Canton’s arrest did not precede the search. When the metal detector alarmed while Canton was passing through it, the lady frisker on duty made a pat down search on her. In the process, Cabunoc felt a bulge on Canton’s abdomen. The strip search that followed was for the purpose of ascertaining what were the packages concealed on Canton’s body.

TC erred in holding that she was caught in flagrante delicto and that the warrantless search was incidental to a lawful arrest

The arrest could not be said to have been made before the search because at the time of the strip search, the arresting officers could not have known what was inside the plastic containers hidden in her body, which were wrapped and sealed.

They could not have determined whether Canton was actually committing a crime; the

Canton, having been flagrante delicto, was lawfully arrested without a warrant

Section 5, Rule 113 ROC provides that a peace officer or a private person may, without a warrant, arrest a person: (a) When, in his presence, the person to be arrested has committed, is actually committing, or is attempting to commit an offense...

The present case falls under paragraph (a) of Section 5, Rule 113. The search conducted on Canton resulted in the discovery of shabu. Armed with the knowledge that Canton was

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strip search was therefore nothing but a fishing expedition

committing a crime, the airport security personnel and police authorities were duty-bound to arrest her. Her subsequent arrest without a warrant was justified, since it was effected upon the discovery and recovery of shabu in her person flagrante delicto.

TC erred in not ruling that the frisker went beyond the limits of the “Terry search” doctrine

The stop and frisk search should have been limited to the patting of her outer garments in order to determine whether she was armed or dangerous.

The scope of a search pursuant to airport security procedure is not confined only to search for weapons under the “ Terry search ” doctrine

The Terry search or “stop and frisk” situation refers to a case where a police officer approaches a person who is acting suspiciously for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior in line with the general interest of effective crime prevention and detection. He could validly conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such person to discover weapons which might be used to assault him.

In the present case, the search was made pursuant to routine airport security procedure. RA 6235 Section 9 provides: Every ticket issued to a passenger by the airline or air carrier concerned shall contain among others the following

condition printed thereon: “Holder hereof and his hand-carried luggage(s) are subject to search for, and seizure of, prohibited materials or substances. Holder refusing to be searched shall not be allowed to board the aircraft”, which shall constitute a part of the contract between the passenger and the air carrier.

RA 6235 Sec. 9 is another exception to the proscription against warrantless searches and seizures. The provision clearly states that the search, unlike in the Terry search, is not limited to weapons. Passengers are also subject to search for prohibited materials or substances.

The strip search in the ladies’ room was justified under the circumstances.

TC erred in not ruling that Canton was under custodial investigation without counsel

Canton alleges that from the moment frisker Cabunoc felt a package at her abdominal area, started inquiring about its contents, detained her, and stripped search her in the ladies’ room, she was under custodial investigation without counsel.

The constitutional right to counsel afforded an accused under custodial investigation was not violated

In this case, no custodial investigation was conducted after Canton’s arrest. She affixed her signature to the receipt of the articles seized from her, but before she did so, she was told that she had the option to sign or not to sign it. Aside from this, no

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statement was taken from her during her detention and used in evidence against her.

TC erred in admitting to the records of the case the report of Dr. Ma. Bernadette Arcena, which was not testified on or offered in evidence, and using the same in determining her guilt

The admission of the medical report was erroneous.

Canton assails the validity of the medical report as evidence on the ground that it violates the hearsay rule.

The medical report contained the following: “This is the first time I carried shabu. I need the money”.

SC held that this contention is meritorious. The admission of the questioned document was erroneous because it was not properly identified.

TC erred in applying the ruling in People v. Johnson

Canton questions the applicability of the doctrine in the Johnson case because of its sweeping statement allowing searches and seizures of departing passengers in airports in view of the gravity of the safety interests involved.

She argues that the applicable case should have been Katz v. United States which upholds the 4th Amendment that “protects people and not places”.

The ruling in People v. Johnson is applicable to the instant case

The Johnson case, which involves similar facts and issues, finds application to the present case. The court ruled that the packs of “methamphetamine hydrochloride” seized during the routine frisk at the airport was acquired legitimately pursuant to airport security procedures and are therefore admissible in evidence against Johnson.

Canton’s reliance on Katz v. United States is misplaced. The facts and circumstances of that case are entirely different from the case at bar.

PEOPLE VS. ARUTA26

THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, plaintiff-appellee, vs. ROSA ARUTA y MENGUIN, accused-appellant.G.R. No. 120915. April 3, 1998 J. Romero

On 13 Dec 1988, the law enforcement officers received information from an informant named “Benjie” that a certain “Aling Rosa” would be leaving for Baguio City on 14 Dec 1988 and would be back in the afternoon of the same day carrying with her a large volume of marijuana.

On 14 Dec 1988, when Aruta alighted from a Victory Liner Bus carrying a travelling bag, the informant pointed her out to the law enforcement officers. NARCOM officers approached her and introduced themselves as NARCOM agents. When asked by one of the officers about the contents of her travelling bag, Aruta gave the same to the officer. When they opened the bag, they found dried marijuana leaves. Aruta was then brought to the NARCOM office for investigation and later charged with violating the Dangerous Drugs Act.

Issue and Holding:1. Whether or not there is probable cause to the arrest. NO2. Whether or not the conducted search and seizure is

lawful. NO

Ratio:Issue #1: On Probable Cause

In searches and seizures effected without a warrant, it is necessary for probable cause to be present. Absent any probable cause, the article(s) seized could not be admitted and used as evidence against the person arrested.

In the present case, the warrantless search and seizure could only be legitimized under Section 5(a) of Rule 113 which states that:

“ A peace officer…may without a warrant, arrest a person when in his presence, the person to be arrested has committed, is actually committing, or is attempting to commit an offense”

Aruta cannot be said to be committing a crime. Neither was she about to commit one nor had she just committed a crime. Aruta was merely crossing the street and was not acting in any manner that would engender a reasonable ground for the NARCOM agents to suspect and conclude that she was committing a crime. It was only when the informant pointed to Aruta and identified her to the agents as the carrier of the marijuana that she was singled out as the suspect. The NARCOM agents would not have apprehended Aruta were it not for the furtive finger of the informant because, as clearly illustrated by the evidence on record, there was no reason whatsoever for them to suspect that accused-appellant was committing a crime, except for the pointing finger of the informant.

Issue #2: On Warrantless Search and SeizureAs such, there was no legal basis for the NARCOM agents

to effect a warrantless search of Aruta’s bag, there being no probable cause and the accused-appellant not having been lawfully arrested. Stated otherwise, the arrest being incipiently illegal, it logically follows that the subsequent search was similarly illegal, it being not incidental to a lawful arrest.

RTC decision REVERSED and SET ASIDE. For lack of evidence to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, accused-appellant ROSA ARUTA Y MENGUIN ACQUITTED and ordered RELEASED from confinement unless for some other legal grounds.

Manalili vs. CA ALAIN MANALILI y DIZON, petitioner, vs. COURT OF APPEALS and PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, respondentsG.R. No. 113447, October 9, 1997J. Panganiban

Manalili was charged of violating Section 8, Article II of RA 6425 or Illegal possession of marijuana residue.

Version of Prosecution:27

2pm April 11, 1988 – Patrolmen Espiritu and Lumabas from the Anti-Narcotics Unit of the Kalookan City Police Station were conducting a surveillance along A. Mabini street, Kalookan City, in front of the Kalookan City Cemetery. They received information that drug addicts were roaming that area.

Upon reaching the Kalookan City Cemetery, the policemen alighted from their vehicle. They then chanced upon a male person in front of the cemetery who appeared high on drugs. He was observed to have reddish eyes and to be walking in a swaying manner. When this male person tried to avoid the policemen, the latter approached him and introduced themselves as police officers. The policemen then asked the male person what he was holding in his hands. The male person tried to resist. Patrolman Espiritu asked the male person if he could see what said male person had in his hands. The latter showed the wallet and allowed Espiritu to examine it. Espiritu took the wallet and found suspected crushed marijuana residue inside. He kept the wallet and its marijuana contents. NBI confirmed that it was marijuana.

Version of Defense:Manalili was aboard a tricycle on the way to his boarding house when 3 policemen ordered the driver of the tricycle to stop because the tricycle driver and his lone passenger were under the influence of marijuana. The policemen brought the accused and the tricycle driver inside the Ford Fiera which the policemen were riding in. After searching the accused and the tricycle driver, nothing was found on the persons. The policemen allowed the tricycle driver to go while they brought the accused to the police headquarters where they said they would again search.

On the way to headquarters, Manalili saw a neighbor and signaled him to follow. Once there, policemen asked Manalili to remove his pants in the presence of the neighbor and a companion. Nothing was found except dirt and dust. Manalili was brought to a cell. Police later told Manalili that they found marijuana inside the pockets of the pants.

In the afternoon, the policemen told Manalili to call his parents to “settle the case” (aka extortion). He refused, saying that his parents didn’t have a telephone. During the case, the driver and neighbor both corroborated Manalili’s version.

RTC: accused is guilty based on testimony of policemen (neutral and disinterested witnesses). Manalili did not even move for reinvestigation or take action against the allegedly erring policemen.

CA affirmed: Discrepancies in policemen’s testimonies are minor and insubstantial inconsistencies. No proof that the decision of the trial court was based on speculations, surmises or conjectures.

Issue: 1. WON the evidence is admissible YES; search was valid

(stop-and-frisk)2. WON the prosecution’s version is credible 3. WON the prosecution’s evidence is sufficient to sustain the

conviction

Ratio:Admissibility of the Evidence Seized During a Stop-and-Frisk- Manalili: protests the admission of the marijuana leaves

found in his possession (products of an illegal search)- Sol-Gen: (1) waived because petitioner never raised this

issue in the proceedings below nor did he object to their admissibility; (2) search was lawful under Section 5(a) Rule 113

- Court revisited Terry v. Ohio and the stop-and-frisk rule. o Terry vs Ohio did not abandon the rule that the police

must, whenever practicable, obtain advance judicial approval of searches and seizures through the warrant procedure

o In Philippine jurisprudence, the general rule is that a search and seizure must be validated by a previously secured judicial warrant. Any evidence obtained in violation of the mentioned provision is legally inadmissible in evidence.

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o However, there are exceptions to the rule against warrantless search and seizure: "(1) search incidental to a lawful arrest, (2) search of moving vehicles, (3) seizure in plain view, (4) customs search, and (5) waiver by the accused themselves of their right against unreasonable search and seizure" with probable cause as the essential requirement

- Many instances where a search and seizure could be effected without necessarily being preceded by an arrest, one of which was stop-and-frisk.

- Patrolman Espiritu and his companions observed during their surveillance that appellant had red eyes and was wobbling like a drunk along the Caloocan City Cemetery, which according to police information was a popular hangout of drug addicts.

o From his experience as a member of the Anti-Narcotics Unit of the Caloocan City Police, such suspicious behavior was characteristic of drug addicts who were "high." sufficient reason to stop petitioner to investigate; found marijuana

- Manalili effectively waived the inadmissibility of any evidence illegally obtained when he failed to raise this issue or to object thereto during the trial. Issues not raised below cannot be pleaded for the first time on appeal.

Assessment of Evidence affirmed CA ruling- Trial court’s assessment of policemen’s credibility (which was

affirmed by CA) holds great weight- Evidence justifies Espiritu’s testimony- Question of whether the marijuana was found inside

petitioner's wallet or inside a plastic bag is immaterial Manalili did not deny possession of said substance

- Failure to present the wallet in evidence did not negate that marijuana was found in petitioner's possession.

Sufficiency of Evidence- Elements of illegal possession of marijuana are: (a) the

accused is in possession of an item or object which is identified to be a prohibited drug; (b) such possession is not authorized by law; and (c) the accused freely and consciously possessed the said drug.

- The substance found in petitioner's possession was identified by NBI Forensic Chemist Aida Pascual to be crushed marijuana leaves. Manalili’s lack of authority to possess

these leaves was established. His awareness thereof was undeniable, considering that petitioner was high on drugs when stopped by the policemen and that he resisted when asked to show and identify the thing he was holding.

- Manalili’s claim of planting the marijuana and extortion can be easily fabricated. Manalili did not file any administrative or criminal case against the arresting officers or present any evidence other than his bare claim.

Decision AFFIRMED with MODIFICATION. Petitioner is sentenced to suffer IMPRISONMENT of SIX (6) YEARS, as minimum, to TWELVE (12) YEARS, as maximum, and to PAY a FINE of SIX THOUSAND PESOS.

Corro vs. LisingROMMEL CORRO, petitioner, vs. HON. ESTEBAN LISING Presiding Judge, Regional Trial Court, Quezon City, Branch XCV HON. REMIGIO ZARI Regional Trial Court, Quezon City, Branch 98; CITY FISCAL'S OFFICE, Quezon City; LT. COL. BERLIN A. CASTILLO and 1ST LT. GODOFREDO M. IGNACIO, respondentsG.R. No. L-69899 July 15, 1985J. Relova

Respondent RTC Judge Esteban Lising,  upon application filed by Lt. Col. Berlin Castillo of the Philippine Constabulary Criminal Investigation Service, issued a search warrant authorizing the search and seizure of articles allegedly used by petitioner in committing the crime of inciting to sedition.

1. Printed copies of Philippine Times;2. Manuscripts/drafts of articles for publication in the Philippine Times;3. Newspaper dummies of the Philippine Times;4. Subversive documents, articles, printed matters, handbills, leaflets, banners;5. Typewriters, duplicating machines, mimeographing and tape recording machines, video machines and tapes

Petitioner filed an urgent motion to recall warrant and to return documents/personal properties alleging among others that the

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properties seized are typewriters, duplicating machines, mimeographing and tape recording machines, video machines and tapes which are not in any way, inanimate or mute things as they are, connected with the offense of inciting to sedition.

Respondent Judge Lising denied the motion. Hence, this petition praying that the search warrant issued by respondent Judge Esteban M. Lising be declared null and void ab initio  that the padlocked office premises of the Philippine Times be reopened.

Respondents would have this Court dismiss the petition stating that probable cause exists justifying the issuance of a search warrant, the articles seized were adequately described in the search warrant, a search was conducted I n an orderly manner and the padlocking of the searched premises was with the consent of petitioner's wife.

Held:Section 3, Article IV of the 1973 Constitution provides:

SEC. 3. ...no search warrant or warrant of arrest issue except upon probable cause to be determined by the judge, or such other responsible officer as may be authorized by law, 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.

and, Section 3, Rule 126 of the New Rules of Court, states that:SEC. 3. Requisites for issuing search warrant. — A search warrant shall not issue but upon probable cause in connection with one specific offense to be determined by the judge or justice of the peace 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.

Probable cause may be defined as "such reasons, supported by facts and circumstances, as will warrant a cautious man in the belief that his actions, and the means taken in prosecuting it, are legally just and proper (Burton vs. St. Paul, M & M. Ry. Co., 33 Minn. 189, cited in U.S. vs. Addison, 28 Phil. 566)."

An application for search warrant must state with particularly the alleged subversive materials published or intended to be published by the publisher and editor of the Philippine Times, Rommel Corro. As We have stated in Burgos, Sr. vs. Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, 133 SCRA 800, "mere generalization will not suffice."

A search warrant should particularly describe the place to be searched and the things to be seized. "The evident purpose and intent of this requirement is to limit the things to be seized to those, and only those, particularly described in the search warrant- to leave the officers of the law with no discretion regarding what articles they should seize, to the end that unreasonable searches and seizures may not be committed, — that abuses may not be committed.

The affidavit of Col. Castillo states that in several issues of the Philippine Times:

... we found that the said publication in fact foments distrust and hatred against the government of the Philippines and its duly constituted authorities, defined and penalized by Article 142 of the Revised Penal Code as amended by Presidential Decree No. 1835; (p. 22, Rollo)

and, the affidavit of Lt. Ignacio reads, among others—... the said periodical published by Rommel Corro, contains articles tending to incite distrust and hatred for the Government of the Philippines or any of its duly constituted authorities. (p. 23, Rollo)

The above statements are mere conclusions of law and will not satisfy the requirements of probable cause. They cannot serve as basis for the issuance of search warrant, absent of the existence of probable cause. In the case at bar, the search warrant issued by respondent judge allowed seizure of printed copies of the Philippine Times, manuscripts/drafts of articles for publication, newspaper dummies, subversive documents, articles, etc., and even typewriters, duplicating machines, mimeographing and tape recording machines.

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Thus, the language used is so all embracing as to include all conceivable records and equipment of petitioner regardless of whether they are legal or illegal. The search warrant under consideration was in the nature of a general warrant which is constitutionally objectionable.

Search Warrant No. Q-00002 issued by the respondent judge on September 29, 1983 declared null and void and SET ASIDE. The prayer for a writ of mandatory injunction for the return of the seized articles GRANTED and all properties seized thereunder are hereby ordered RELEASED to petitioner. Respondents Lt. Col. Berlin A. Castillo and lst Lt. Godofredo M. Ignacio are ordered to RE-OPEN the padlocked office premises of the Philippine Times at 610 Mezzanine Floor, Gochengco Bldg., T.M. Kalaw, Ermita, Manila.

Kho vs. MakalintalBENJAMIN V. KHO and ELIZABETH ALINDOGAN, petitioners, vs. HON. ROBERTO L. MAKALINTAL and NATIONAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, respondentsG.R. No. 94902-06, April 21, 1999J. Purisima

Synopsis:This is a petition for certiorari assailing the order of the Metropolitan Trial Court of Parañaque which denied petitioners’ Motion to Quash Search Warrants emanating from the same court. Petitioners sought to restrain the respondent National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) from using the objects seized by virtue of such warrants in any case or cases filed or to be filed against them and to return immediately the said items, including firearms, ammunition and explosives, radio communication equipment, handsets, transceivers, two units of vehicles and motorcycle. Petitioners questioned the issuance of subject search warrants, theorizing upon absence of any probable cause therefor. They contended that the surveillance and investigation conducted by NBI agents within the premises involved, prior to the application for the search warrants under controversy, were not sufficient to vest in the applicants personal knowledge of facts and circumstances showing or indicating the commission of a crime by the petitioners.

The Court ruled as untenable petitioners’ contention. The application for the questioned search warrants was based on the personal knowledge of the applicants and their mistresses. The warrants in question complied with the Constitutional and statutory requirements. The law does not require that the things to be seized must be described in precise and minute detail as to leave no room for doubt on the part of the searching authorities. Considering that cases in court had been instituted against the petitioners, the petition herein to return all objects seized and to restrain respondent NBI from using the said objects as evidence, has become moot and academic. Herein petitioner was therefore dismissed.

On May 15, 1990, NBI Agent Max B. Salvador applied for the issuance of search warrants by the respondent Judge against Banjamin V. Kho, now petitioner, in his residence at No. 45 Bb. Ramona Tirona St., BF Homes, Phase I, Paranaque. On the same day, Eduardo T. Arugay, another NBI agent, applied with the same court for the issuance of search warrants against the said petitioner in his house at No. 326 McDivitt St., Bgy. Moonwalk, Paranaque. The search warrants were applied for after teams of NBI agents had conducted a personal surveillance and investigation in the two houses referred to on the basis of confidential information they received that the said places were being used as storage centers for unlicensed firearms and “chop-chop” vehicles. On the same day, the respondent Judge conducted the necessary examination of the applicants and their witnesses, after which he issued Search Warrant Nos. 90-11, 90-12, 90-13, 90-14, and 90-15.

On the following day, May 16, 1990, NBI conducted the simultaneous searches on the said residences of the petitioner (Kho) and they were able to confiscate the above mention objects stated in the warrant and the simultaneous searches also resulted in the confiscation of various radio and telecommunication equipment. The confiscated items were verified in Camp Crame and were proven that all of them are unlicensed.

Petitioner (Kho) question the validity of the warrant and filed a Motion to Quash the previous decision.

Issues:

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1. Whether or not the issuance of the search warrant by the respondent Judge valid.

2. Whether or not the Motion to Quash filed by the petitioner (Kho) alleging that there was an abuse enforcement of the challenge search warrant valid.

3. Whether or not the Petitioners sought to restrain the respondent National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) from using the objects seized by virtue of such warrants in any case or cases filed or to be filed against them and to return immediately the said items valid.

Held: The Court believes, and so holds, that the said warrants comply with Constitutional and statutory requirements. The law does not require that the things to be seized must be described in precise and minute detail as to leave no room for doubt on the part of the searching authorities. Otherwise, it would be virtually impossible for the applicants to obtain a warrant as they would not know exactly what kind of things they are looking for. Since the element of time is very crucial in criminal cases, the effort and time spent in researching on the details to be embodied in the warrant would render the purpose of the search nugatory.

The question of whether there was abuse in the enforcement of the challenged search warrants is not within the scope of a Motion to Quash. In a Motion to Quash, what is assailed is the validity of the issuance of the warrant. The manner of serving the warrant and of effecting the search are not an issue to be resolved here. As aptly opined and ruled by the respondent Judge, petitioners have remedies under pertinent penal, civil and administrative laws for their problem at hand, which cannot be solved by their present motion to quash.

Considering that cases for Illegal Possession of Firearms and Explosives and Violation of Section 3 in relation to Section 14 of Republic Act No. 6539, otherwise known as the Anti-Carnapping Act of 1972, have been instituted against the petitioners, the petition for mandamus with preliminary and mandatory injunction to return all objects seized and to restrain respondent NBI from using the said objects as evidence, has become moot and academic.

WHEREFORE, for want of merit and on the ground that it has become moot and academic, the petition at bar is hereby DISMISSED. No pronoucement as to costs.

Microsoft vs. MaxicorpMICROSOFT CORPORATION and LOTUS DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION, petitioners, vs. MAXICORP, INC., respondentG.R. No. 140946, September 13, 2004J. Carpio

On 25 July 1996, National Bureau of Investigation (“NBI”) Agent Dominador Samiano, Jr. (“NBI Agent Samiano”) filed several applications for search warrants in the RTC against Maxicorp for alleged violation of Section 29 of PD 49 and Article 189 of the RPC. After conducting a preliminary examination of the applicant and his witnesses, Judge William M. Bayhon issued Search Warrants Nos. 96-451, 96-452, 96-453 and 96-454, all dated 25 July 1996, against Maxicorp.

Armed with the search warrants, NBI agents conducted on 25 July 1996 a search of Maxicorp’s premises and seized property fitting the description stated in the search warrants.

On 2 September 1996, Maxicorp filed a motion to quash the search warrants alleging that there was no probable cause for their issuance and that the warrants are in the form of “general warrants.” The RTC denied Maxicorp’s motion on 22 January 1997.

The RTC also denied Maxicorp’s motion for reconsideration. The RTC found probable cause to issue the search warrants after examining NBI Agent Samiano, John Benedict Sacriz (“Sacriz”), and computer technician Felixberto Pante (“Pante”). The three testified on what they discovered during their respective visits to Maxicorp. NBI Agent Samiano also presented certifications from petitioners that they have not authorized Maxicorp to perform the witnessed activities using petitioners’ products.

On 24 July 1997, Maxicorp filed a petition for certiorari with the Court of Appeals seeking to set aside the RTC’s order. On 23 December 1998, the Court of Appeals reversed the RTC’s order denying Maxicorp’s motion to quash the search warrants.

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Petitioners moved for reconsideration. The Court of Appeals denied petitioners’ motion on 29 November 1999.

The Court of Appeals held that NBI Agent Samiano failed to present during the preliminary examination conclusive evidence that Maxicorp produced or sold the counterfeit products. The Court of Appeals pointed out that the sales receipt NBI Agent Samiano presented as evidence that he bought the products from Maxicorp was in the name of a certain “Joel Diaz.”

Hence, this petition.

Issues:1) Whether or not there was probable cause to issue the search warrants.2) Whether or not the search warrants are “general warrants.”Held:1) Probable cause means “such reasons, supported by facts and circumstances as will warrant a cautious man in the belief that his action and the means taken in prosecuting it are legally just and proper.” Thus, probable cause for a search warrant requires such facts and circumstances that would lead a reasonably prudent man to believe that an offense has been committed and the objects sought in connection with that offense are in the place to be searched.

The judge determining probable cause must do so only after personally examining under oath the complainant and his witnesses. The oath required must refer to “the truth of the facts within the personal knowledge of the petitioner or his witnesses, because the purpose thereof is to convince the committing magistrate, not the individual making the affidavit and seeking the issuance of the warrant, of the existence of probable cause.” The applicant must have personal knowledge of the circumstances. “Reliable information” is insufficient. Mere affidavits are not enough, and the judge must depose in writing the complainant and his witnesses.

The Court of Appeals’ reversal of the findings of the RTC centers on the fact that the two witnesses for petitioners during the preliminary examination failed to prove conclusively that they bought counterfeit software from Maxicorp. The Court of Appeals ruled that this amounted to a failure to prove the existence of a

connection between the offense charged and the place searched.

The offense charged against Maxicorp is copyright infringement under Section 29 of PD 49 and unfair competition under Article 189 of the RPC. To support these charges, petitioners presented the testimonies of NBI Agent Samiano, computer technician Pante, and Sacriz, a civilian. The offenses that petitioners charged Maxicorp contemplate several overt acts. The sale of counterfeit products is but one of these acts. Both NBI Agent Samiano and Sacriz related to the RTC how they personally saw Maxicorp commit acts of infringement and unfair competition.

During the preliminary examination, the RTC subjected the testimonies of the witnesses to the requisite examination. NBI Agent Samiano testified that he saw Maxicorp display and offer for sale counterfeit software in its premises. He also saw how the counterfeit software were produced and packaged within Maxicorp’s premises. NBI Agent Samiano categorically stated that he was certain the products were counterfeit because Maxicorp sold them to its customers without giving the accompanying ownership manuals, license agreements and certificates of authenticity. Sacriz testified that during his visits to Maxicorp, he witnessed several instances when Maxicorp installed petitioners’ software into computers it had assembled.

Sacriz also testified that he saw the sale of petitioners’ software within Maxicorp’s premises. Petitioners never authorized Maxicorp to install or sell their software.

The testimonies of these two witnesses, coupled with the object and documentary evidence they presented, are sufficient to establish the existence of probable cause. From what they have witnessed, there is reason to believe that Maxicorp engaged in copyright infringement and unfair competition to the prejudice of petitioners. Both NBI Agent Samiano and Sacriz were clear and insistent that the counterfeit software were not only displayed and sold within Maxicorp’s premises, they were also produced, packaged and in some cases, installed there.

No law or rule states that probable cause requires a specific kind of evidence. No formula or fixed rule for its determination exists. Probable cause is determined in the light of conditions obtaining in a given situation. Thus, it was improper for the Court of

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Appeals to reverse the RTC’s findings simply because the sales receipt evidencing NBI Agent Samiano’s purchase of counterfeit goods is not in his name.

For purposes of determining probable cause, the sales receipt is not the only proof that the sale of petitioners’ software occurred. During the search warrant application proceedings, NBI Agent Samiano presented to the judge the computer unit that he purchased from Maxicorp, in which computer unit Maxicorp had pre-installed petitioners’ software. Sacriz, who was present when NBI Agent Samiano purchased the computer unit, affirmed that NBI Agent Samiano purchased the computer unit. Pante, the computer technician, demonstrated to the judge the presence of petitioners’ software on the same computer unit. There was a comparison between petitioners’ genuine software and Maxicorp’s software pre-installed in the computer unit that NBI Agent Sambiano purchased. Even if we disregard the sales receipt issued in the name of “Joel Diaz,” which petitioners explained was the alias NBI Agent Samiano used in the operation, there still remains more than sufficient evidence to establish probable cause for the issuance of the search warrants.

This also applies to the Court of Appeals’ ruling on Sacriz’s testimony. The fact that Sacriz did not actually purchase counterfeit software from Maxicorp does not eliminate the existence of probable cause. Copyright infringement and unfair competition are not limited to the act of selling counterfeit goods. They cover a whole range of acts, from copying, assembling, packaging to marketing, including the mere offering for sale of the counterfeit goods. The clear and firm testimonies of petitioners’ witnesses on such other acts stand untarnished. The Constitution and the Rules of Court only require that the judge examine personally and thoroughly the applicant for the warrant and his witnesses to determine probable cause. The RTC complied adequately with the requirement of the Constitution and the Rules of Court.

2) A search warrant must state particularly the place to be searched and the objects to be seized. The evident purpose for this requirement is to limit the articles to be seized only to those particularly described in the search warrant. This is a protection against potential abuse. It is necessary to leave the officers of the law with no discretion regarding what articles they shall

seize, to the end that no unreasonable searches and seizures be committed.

In addition, under Section 4, Rule 126 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure, a search warrant shall issue “in connection with one specific offense.” The articles described must bear a direct relation to the offense for which the warrant is issued.

Thus, this rule requires that the warrant must state that the articles subject of the search and seizure are used or intended for use in the commission of a specific offense.

Maxicorp argues that the warrants issued against it are too broad in scope and lack the specificity required with respect to the objects to be seized. After examining the wording of the warrants issued, the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Maxicorp and reversed the RTC’s Order.

The Court of Appeals based its reversal on its perceived infirmity of paragraph (e) of the search warrants the RTC issued. The appellate court found that similarly worded warrants, all of which noticeably employ the phrase “used or intended to be used,” were previously held void by this Court.

It is only required that a search warrant be specific as far as the circumstances will ordinarily allow. The description of the property to be seized need not be technically accurate or precise. The nature of the description should vary according to whether the identity of the property or its character is a matter of concern.

Measured against this standard we find that paragraph (e) is not a general warrant. The articles to be seized were not only sufficiently identified physically, they were also specifically identified by stating their relation to the offense charged. Paragraph (e) specifically refers to those articles used or intended for use in the illegal and unauthorized copying of petitioners’ software. This language meets the test of specificity. However, we find paragraph (c) of the search warrants lacking in particularity:

c) Sundry items such as labels, boxes, prints, packages, wrappers, receptacles, advertisements and other

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paraphernalia bearing the copyrights and/or trademarks owned by MICROSOFT CORPORATION;

The scope of this description is all-embracing since it covers property used for personal or other purposes not related to copyright infringement or unfair competition. Moreover, the description covers property that Maxicorp may have bought legitimately from Microsoft or its licensed distributors. Paragraph (c) simply calls for the seizure of all items bearing the Microsoft logo, whether legitimately possessed or not. Neither does it limit the seizure to products used in copyright infringement or unfair competition. Still, no provision of law exists which requires that a warrant, partially defective in specifying some items sought to be seized yet particular with respect to the other items, should be nullified as a whole.

A partially defective warrant remains valid as to the items specifically described in the warrant. A search warrant is severable, the items not sufficiently described may be cut off without destroying the whole warrant. The exclusionary rule found in Section 3(2) of Article III of the Constitution renders inadmissible in any proceeding all evidence obtained through unreasonable searches and seizure. Thus, all items seized under paragraph (c) of the search warrants, not falling under paragraphs a, b, d, e or f, should be returned to Maxicorp.

WHEREFORE, petition PARTIALLY GRANTED. Court of Appeals decision dated 23 December 1998 and its Resolution dated 29 November 1999 in CA-G.R. SP No. 44777 REVERSED and SET ASIDE except with respect to articles seized under paragraph (c) of Search Warrants Nos. 96-451, 96-452, 96-453 and 96-454. All articles seized under paragraph (c) of the search warrants, not falling under paragraphs a, b, d, e or f, ordered returned to Maxicorp, Inc. immediately.

Maryland vs. KingMARYLAND v. KING 12-207 June 3, 2013J. Kennedy

After his 2009 arrest on first- and second-degree assault charges, respondent King was processed through a Wicomico County, Maryland, facility, where booking personnel used a

cheek swab to take a DNA sample pursuant to the Maryland DNA Collection Act (Act). The swab was matched to an unsolved 2003 rape, and King was charged with that crime. He moved to suppress the DNA match, arguing that the Act violated the Fourth Amendment , but the Circuit Court Judge found the law constitutional. King was convicted of rape. The Maryland Court of Appeals set aside the conviction, finding unconstitutional the portions of the Act authorizing DNA collection from felony arrestees.

Held:When officers make an arrest supported by probable cause to hold for a serious offense and bring the suspect to the station to be detained in custody, taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee's DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

(a) DNA testing may "significantly improve both the criminal justice system and police investigative practices,"District Attorney's Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U.S. 52 , 55, by making it "possible to determine whether a biological tissue matches a suspect with near certainty," id ., at 62. Maryland's Act authorizes law enforcement authorities to collect DNA samples from, as relevant here, persons charged with violent crimes, including first-degree assault. A sample may not be added to a database before an individual is arraigned, and it must be destroyed if, e.g., he is not convicted. Only identity information may be added to the database. Here, the officer collected a DNA sample using the common "buccal swab" procedure, which is quick and painless, [*1963] requires no "surgical intrusio[n] beneath the skin," Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753 , 760, and poses no threat to the arrestee's "health or safety," id., at 763 . Respondent's identification as the rapist resulted in part through the operation of the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), which connects DNA laboratories at the local, state, and national level, and which standardizes the points of comparison, i.e.,loci, used in DNA analysis.

(b) The framework for deciding the issue presented is well established. Using a buccal swab inside a person's cheek to obtain a DNA sample is a search under the Fourth Amendment. And the fact that the intrusion is negligible is of central relevance to determining whether the search is reasonable, "the

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ultimate measure of the constitutionality of a governmental search," Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 , 652. Because the need for a warrant is greatly diminished here, where the arrestee was already in valid police custody for a serious offense supported by probable cause, the search is analyzed by reference to "reasonableness, not individualized suspicion," Samson v. California, 547 U.S. 843 , 855, n. 4, and reasonableness is determined by weighing "the promotion of legitimate governmental interests" against "the degree to which [the search] intrudes upon an individual's privacy," Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U.S. 295 , 300.

(c) In this balance of reasonableness, great weight is given to both the significant government interest at stake in the identification of arrestees and DNA identification's unmatched potential to serve that interest.

(1) The Act serves a well-established, legitimate government interest: the need of law enforcement officers in a safe and accurate way to process and identify persons and possessions taken into custody. "[P]robable cause provides legal justification for arresting a [suspect], and for a brief period of detention to take the administrative steps incident to arrest," Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 , 113- 114; and the "validity of the search of a person incident to a lawful arrest" is settled, United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 , 224. Individual suspicion is not necessary. The "routine administrative procedure[s] at a police station house incident to booking and jailing the suspect" have different origins and different constitutional justifications than, say, the search of a place not incident to arrest, Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640 , 643, which depends on the "fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place," Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 , 238. And when probable cause exists to remove an individual from the normal channels of society and hold him in legal custody, DNA identification plays a critical role in serving those interests. First, the government has an interest in properly identifying "who has been arrested and who is being tried." Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court of Nev., Humboldt Cty., 542 U.S. 177 , 191. Criminal history is critical to officers who are processing a suspect for detention. They already seek identity information through routine and accepted means: comparing booking photographs to sketch

artists' depictions, showing mugshots to potential witnesses, and comparing fingerprints against electronic databases of known criminals and unsolved crimes. The only difference between DNA analysis and fingerprint [*1964] databases is the unparalleled accuracy DNA provides. DNA is another metric of identification used to connect the arrestee with his or her public persona, as reflected in records of his or her actions that are available to the police. Second, officers must ensure that the custody of an arrestee does not create inordinate "risks for facility staff, for the existing detainee population, and for a new detainee." Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington, 566 U.S. ___ , ___. DNA allows officers to know the type of person being detained. Third, "the Government has a substantial interest in ensuring that persons accused of crimes are available for trials." Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 , 534. An arrestee may be more inclined to flee if he thinks that continued contact with the criminal justice system may expose another serious offense. Fourth, an arrestee's past conduct is essential to assessing the danger he poses to the public, which will inform a court's bail determination. Knowing that the defendant is wanted for a previous violent crime based on DNA identification may be especially probative in this regard. Finally, in the interests of justice, identifying an arrestee as the perpetrator of some heinous crime may have the salutary effect of freeing a person wrongfully imprisoned. 

(2) DNA identification is an important advance in the techniques long used by law enforcement to serve legitimate police concerns. Police routinely have used scientific advancements as standard procedures for identifying arrestees. Fingerprinting, perhaps the most direct historical analogue to DNA technology, has, from its advent, been viewed as a natural part of "the administrative steps incident to arrest." County of Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44 , 58. However, DNA identification is far superior. The additional intrusion upon the arrestee's privacy beyond that associated with fingerprinting is not significant, and DNA identification is markedly more accurate. It may not be as fast as fingerprinting, but rapid fingerprint analysis is itself of recent vintage, and the question of how long it takes to process identifying information goes to the efficacy of the search for its purpose of prompt identification, not the constitutionality

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of the search. Rapid technical advances are also reducing DNA processing times.

(d) The government interest is not outweighed by respondent's privacy interests.

(1) By comparison to the substantial government interest and the unique effectiveness of DNA identification, the intrusion of a cheek swab to obtain a DNA sample is minimal. Reasonableness must be considered in the context of an individual's legitimate privacy expectations, which necessarily diminish when he is taken into police custody. Bell, supra , at 557. Such searches thus differ from the so-called special needs searches of,e.g., otherwise law-abiding motorists at checkpoints. See Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32 . The reasonableness inquiry considers two other circumstances in which particularized suspicion is not categorically required: "diminished expectations of privacy [and a] minimal intrusion." Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U.S. 326 , 330. An invasive surgery may raise privacy concerns weighty enough for the search to require a warrant, notwithstanding the arrestee's diminished privacy expectations, but a buccal swab, which involves a brief and minimal intrusion with "virtually no risk, trauma, or pain," Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 , 771, does not increase the indignity already attendant to normal incidents of arrest.

(2) The processing of respondent's DNA sample's CODIS loci also did not intrude on his privacy in a way that would make his DNA identification unconstitutional. Those loci came from noncoding DNA parts that do not reveal an arrestee's genetic traits and are unlikely to reveal any private medical information. Even if they could provide such information, they are not in fact tested for that end. Finally, the Act provides statutory protections to guard against such invasions of privacy.

(Another version/digest; with discussion and analysis)Does the Fourth Amendment allow the States to collect and analyze DNA from people arrested and charged with serious crimes?

Maryland police arrested Alonzo Jay King, Jr., in 2009 for first- and second-degree assault. Under Maryland’s DNA Collection Act (the “DNA Act”), the police were authorized to collect King’s DNA. When the DNA data was added to the state’s database, it matched a prior set of DNA data collected in a separate 2003 rape case that remained unsolved. Using the 2009 DNA match as evidence, a Maryland trial court convicted King of the 2003 rape. The state’s highest court reversed King’s conviction, finding that the DNA evidence was improperly obtained during an unreasonable search. The court deemed the search unreasonable and thus unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment because King’s right to the expectation of privacy was greater than Maryland’s interest in using his DNA to identify him. Still, the court upheld the constitutionality of the DNA Act overall. How the Supreme Court decides this case will reflect its view on the correct balance between the government’s interest in solving violent crimes using DNA evidence and an individual’s interest in retaining his Fourth Amendment right against warrantless, suspicionless searches.

IssueWhen state officials collect and analyze a DNA sample taken from a person who has been arrested for, but not convicted of, a criminal offense, is there a violation of the person’s right against unreasonable searches as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment?

Maryland’s DNA Collection Act (the “DNA Act”) authorizes law enforcement officers to collect DNA samples from a person who is arrested, but not yet convicted, for violent crimes or burglary. In 2009, Alonzo Jay King, Jr. was arrested in Maryland on first- and second-degree assault charges. The DNA Act authorized collection of a DNA sample from King because assault is a violent crime. On the day of King’s arrest, personnel at the booking facility swabbed King’s mouth to collect his DNA sample and sent it for processing. When King’s DNA record was uploaded to the Maryland DNA database, it matched a DNA sample collected in an unrelated, unsolved 2003 rape case. The police had collected the 2003 DNA sample from the rape victim who underwent a sexual assault forensic exam. After a police detective presented the matching 2009 and 2003 DNA to a grand jury, the grand jury indicted King for first-degree rape. Later in 2009, the detective obtained a search warrant and

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collected a second DNA sample from King that also matched the 2003 sample.  King sought to suppress the DNA evidence, arguing that his arrest and indictment for rape were invalid as an unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. He claimed that the DNA Act was unconstitutional. Alternatively, he claimed that even if the court decided the DNA Act was constitutional, the State failed to follow the DNA Act’s procedures when it collected his DNA because the State could not show that an approved person completed the collection or that it provided King with the required notice of the Act’s expungement provisions. The Circuit Court for Wicomico County denied King’s motion to suppress, upholding the constitutionality of the DNA Act and finding that King failed to show evidence that the warrant for his second DNA sample was invalid or improperly obtained. King was convicted of rape and sentenced to life in prison.

Before King could proceed with an appeal, the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals of Maryland, issued a writ of certiorari to consider whether the trial court improperly denied King’s motion to suppress the DNA evidence. It determined that the DNA Act, as it applied to King in this case, was unconstitutional because when the court weighed King’s right to theexpectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches against the State’s interest in using his DNA to identify him for purposes of his 2009 arrest on assault charges, King’s privacy right was greater. According to the court, the State undertook two separate biological searches, first when it swabbed the inside of King’s mouth and second when it analyzed the DNA sample obtained from the swab. The court reversed the trial court’s decision and determined that the improperly-acquired DNA evidence should have been suppressed at trial. It also decided that the DNA Act was constitutional because even though it was inappropriately applied to King, there were conceivable circumstances in which a state would need to use DNA samples to identify but not investigate an individual arrested for a violent crime.  The Supreme Court granted Maryland’s petition for a writ of certiorari to determine whether the Fourth Amendment permits states to obtain and analyze the DNA of people arrested for but not yet convicted of violent crimes.

DiscussionMaryland advocates for the Supreme Court to reverse the Court of Appeals of Maryland and affirm its decision that the DNA Act does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Maryland asserts that taking King’s DNA sample was a reasonable search because important governmental interests outweighed the minimal intrusiveness of DNA collection. In opposition, King argues that the lower court correctly found that Maryland performed an unreasonable search, in violation of the Fourth Amendment, when it collected and analyzed his DNA after his 2009 arrest for assault. King argues that the search was invalid because Maryland used his DNA not to link him to the crime for which he was arrested, but instead to investigate his connection to the 2003 rape, even though it had no reason to suspect his involvement.  

DNA Evidence to Solve Crimes In support of Maryland, California and other states note that allowing DNA collection and analysis will resolve unsolved crimes and improve public safety. The States reason that one challenge in law enforcement is solving crimes committed by unknown offenders. Because statistics show that “arrestees are more likely than the general public to be repeat criminal offenders,” the States note that collecting DNA samples from arrestees will give police officers a reliable method for connecting the identities of new arrestees with evidence in unsolved crimes. Further, DNA Saves, a group that educates and fundraises in support of laws authorizing forensic DNA sampling, notes that a DNA database offers an investigation tool by which the police may not only solve crimes but also identify and remove violent offenders from the general population, thereby preventing future crimes by repeat offenders.In opposition, King notes that when Maryland reasons that DNA collection is beneficial because arrestees are more likely than the general public to have committed other crimes, there is a risk of extending such reasoning too far. King hypothesizes that the same could be said for other subgroups, for instance “young men, residents of particular neighborhoods, or individuals from particular socioeconomic or educational backgrounds—as long as it could be shown that those groups have a higher incidence of criminal activity.” King concedes that while it may be tempting to allow DNA testing in his case because the DNA match helped solve a horrible rape, the Court should not permit Maryland to enforce its DNA Act for suspicionless, warrantless

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searches. Enforcing the DNA Act, argues King, enables intrusion into individual privacy.

DNA Evidence to Enhance Law Enforcement  The Maryland Chiefs of Police Association argues that police officers with access to DNA data will more accurately manage detainees in their custody. The Maryland Chiefs note that when an officer knows that an individual is suspected of committing another offense, the officer may more knowledgably determine whether to order detention pending trial or to segregate the suspect from other prisoners. Further, the Maryland Chiefs contend that because DNA evidence helps police pursue successful investigations and convictions, the evidence boosts public confidence in law enforcement.

In response, King argues that Maryland’s DNA Act gives considerable discretion to an arresting officer, giving him the option whether to charge defendants with offenses that qualify for DNA collection. King notes, for instance, that had he been charged with only second-degree and not first-degree assault, he would not have been subject to DNA testing under the DNA Act.Finding for Maryland, King contends, would give to law enforcement too much power to choose which people to search for involvement in unrelated crimes.

AnalysisThe Supreme Court will determine whether the Fourth Amendment allows the States to collect and analyze DNA from people arrested and charged with serious crimes, but not yet convicted. The parties disagree about how the court must determine the constitutionality of a search under the Fourth Amendment. Maryland argues that the court must evaluate a search by balancing an individual's privacy interests with the government's interests. King argues that the court must begin with the presumption that warrantless, suspicionless searches violate the Fourth Amendment.

FOURTH AMENDMENT PROTECTIONMaryland asserts argues that the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches, but that its practice of collecting and analyzing DNA is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The State argues that a search is reasonable if the government's interest in conducting the search outweighs the individual's privacy interests. The court must determine a search's

reasonableness by balancing how much it intrudes on an individual's privacy interest with how much it advances government interests.  Beyond this balancing, Maryland contends that the Fourth Amendment does not require the government to suspect an arrestee of having committed a particular crime.  The State claims that a search may be reasonable without a warrant orprobable cause. Moreover, Maryland contends that the Constitution does not require individualized suspicion before the government can conduct a search. The State argues that  a search may still be reasonable without these requirements if the individual is still safeguarded by other protections.  Indeed, the State contends that the court recognized this principle in Samson v. California, permitting the warrantless and suspicionless search of a parolee because the State's interest in reducing recidivism outweighed the parolee's lowered privacy expectations.Here, Maryland claims that the balancing test permits the searches authorized by the DNA Collection Act,  and that King had reduced privacy expectations because of his status as an arrestee. 

King argues that Maryland's Fourth Amendment analysis is backwards.   King asserts that the court must presume that the state cannot conduct a search without individualized suspicion.Only if the government justifies an exception to the rule, King argues, should the court engage in balancing. Otherwise, King claims, the Fourth Amendment would be reduced to “an after-the-fact protection for individual liberties.” Here, King asserts that Maryland conducted a search by obtaining and analyzing a cheek swab from King. The search triggered Fourth Amendment protection, King argues, and the search was presumptively unreasonable because Maryland did not have a warrant and or probable cause. King contends that the state had no reason to believe that its DNA analysis would link him to the sexual assault for which he was later charged. Thus, he claims that Maryland also failed to meet the Court's lower standard of reasonable suspicion.

EXPECTATIONS OF PRIVACYMaryland argues that its practice of collecting and analyzing DNA minimally intrudes on arrestees' privacy interests. The State claims that a cheek swab is a minor physical intrusion, and more importantly, that once an individual is arrested and in the state's custody, he has reduced privacy expectations. Thus, Maryland asserts that its searches under the DNA Collection Act

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are valid because they only reveal an arrestee's identity “as expressed by a short and essentially random sequence of numbers.” Moreover, the State contends that arrest eliminates a person's expectation of remaining anonymous. The State claims that the court has denied the right to anonymity for people stopped by police on the street and subpoenaed by a grand jury, so the right cannot exist for someone lawfully arrested for committing a serious crime.

King responds that conviction, not arrest, transforms a person's expectation of privacy. King argues that in Samson, the court recognized an exception to the individualized suspicion requirement because parolees have a reduced expectation of privacy. King asserts that the reduced expectation of privacy applies to those who have been imprisoned or released but still under state supervision. To the contrary, King notes that he was merely arrested. He concedes that court has permitted various searches incident to arrest, but that this doctrine has never justified suspicionless searches for unrelated offenses.  

BALANCING PRIVACY AND GOVERNMENT INTERESTSMaryland argues that its searches under the DNA Collection Act are justified by important government interests. The State claims that DNA analysis advances the state's interest in accurately identifying the individuals in its custody. To that end, the State asserts that DNA analysis is simply the “gold standard of forensic identification.” Maryland also claims that DNA analysis enables it to solve crimes more efficiently. The State argues that DNA analysis saves the state resources by narrowing the field of suspects, and allows the state to identify suspects more accurately and reduce the risk of letting a criminal go free. Moreover, the state contends that expanding DNA collection to arrestees is a reasonable choice because a small fraction of the population is responsible for an overwhelming majority of crimes. Thus, Maryland argues that collecting DNA from arrestees is reasonable because they are more likely to be repeat offenders.   Lastly, the State points to the facts of this case to justify its DNA collection practice. The State claims that without the DNA Collection Act, which authorized the cheek swab from King, the police would not have connected King to the sexual assault for which he was ultimately charged.

King maintains that the court should not determine reasonableness by balancing interests.   Still, King argues that

his privacy interests outweigh the government’s interests. King asserts intrusions into the body are at least as significant as other realms protected by the Fourth Amendment, including the home. Moreover, King contends that DNA analysis implicates serious privacy concerns. He argues that DNA analysis can lead to information about a person’s medical history and even their age, ethnicity, intelligence, and “propensity for violence and addiction.” King acknowledges the state’s interest in solving and preventing crimes, but argues that the government may only collect and analyze DNA of arrestees under two circumstances: (i) once they are convicted; and (ii) where the collection would aid law enforcement in connecting the arrestee to the crime of arrest. King argues that his case falls outside these two categories and that the state has not otherwise shown how DNA collection aids its interest in solving crimes.

ConclusionIn this case, the Court will determine whether states may collect and analyze DNA from arrestees after they have been charged with a serious crime, but not yet convicted. The Court’s decision will turn on its interpretation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. While Maryland’s DNA Collection Act previously survived Fourth Amendment scrutiny when the law authorized DNA collection of convicted felons, the Court now evaluates the practice when applied to arrestees. This case has important consequences for understanding the nature of Fourth Amendment protection, and the relationship between individual liberties and the use of modern technology to aid law enforcement.

MISSOURI v. MCNEELY 11-1425 April 17, 2013J. Sotomayor

Doctrine:A law enforcement officer must generally obtain a warrant from a neutral magistrate before ordering a blood test of a person detained for a suspected DUI, as the mere dissipation of blood-alcohol levels over time does not constitute exigent circumstances under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

Respondent McNeely was stopped by a Missouri police officer for speeding and crossing the centerline. After declining to take a

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breath test to measure his blood alcohol concentration (BAC), he was arrested and taken to a nearby hospital for blood testing. The officer never attempted to secure a search warrant. McNeely refused to consent to the blood test, but the officer directed a lab technician to take a sample. McNeely's BAC tested well above the legal limit, and he was charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI). He moved to suppress the blood test result, arguing that taking his blood without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The trial court agreed, concluding that the exigency exception to the warrant requirement did not apply because, apart from the fact that McNeely's blood alcohol was dissipating, no circumstances suggested that the officer faced an emergency. The State Supreme Court affirmed, relying on Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 , in which this Court upheld a DWI suspect's warrantless blood test where the officer "might reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency, in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatened 'the destruction of evidence,'" id., at 770. This case, the state court found, involved a routine DWI investigation where no factors other than the natural dissipation of blood alcohol suggested that there was an emergency, and, thus, the nonconsensual warrantless test violated McNeely's right to be free from unreasonable searches of his person.

Held: The judgment is affirmed. In drunk-driving investigations, the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in every case sufficient to justify conducting a blood test without a warrant.

(a) The principle that a warrantless search of the person is reasonable only if it falls within a recognized exception, see, e.g., United States v. Robinson, 414 U.S. 218 , 224, applies here, where the search involved a compelled physical intrusion beneath McNeely's skin and into his veins to obtain a blood sample to use as evidence in a criminal investigation. One recognized exception "applies when '"the exigencies of the situation" make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a] warrantless search is objectively reasonable.'" Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. ___, ___. This Court looks to the totality of circumstances in determining whether an exigency exits. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398 , 406. Applying this approach in Schmerber, the Court found a warrantless blood test

reasonable after considering all of the facts and circumstances of that case and carefully basing its holding on those specific facts, including that alcohol levels decline after drinking stops and that testing was delayed while officers transported the injured suspect to the hospital and investigated the accident scene.

(b) The State nonetheless seeks a per se rule, contending that exigent circumstances necessarily exist when an officer has probable cause to believe a person has been driving under the influence of alcohol because BAC evidence is inherently evanescent. Though a person's blood alcohol level declines until the alcohol is eliminated, it does not follow that the Court should depart from careful case-by-case assessment of exigency. When officers in drunk-driving investigations can reasonably obtain a warrant before having a blood sample drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so. See McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456. Circumstances may make obtaining a warrant impractical such that the alcohol's dissipation will support an exigency, but that is a reason to decide each case on its facts, as in Schmerber, not to accept the "considerable overgeneralization" that a per se rule would reflect, Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385 , 393. Blood testing is different in critical respects from other destruction-of-evidence cases. Unlike a situation where, e.g., a suspect has control over easily disposable evidence, see Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291 , 296, BAC evidence naturally dissipates in a gradual and relatively predictable manner. Moreover, because an officer must typically take a DWI suspect to a medical facility and obtain a trained medical professional's assistance before having a blood test conducted, some delay between the time of the arrest or accident and time of the test is inevitable regardless of whether a warrant is obtained. The State's rule also fails to account for advances in the 47 years since Schmerber was decided that allow for the more expeditious processing of warrant applications, particularly in contexts like drunk-driving investigations where the evidence supporting probable cause is simple. The natural dissipation of alcohol in the blood may support an exigency finding in a specific case, as it did in Schmerber, but it does not do so categorically.

(c) Because the State sought a per se rule here, it did not argue that there were exigent circumstances in this particular case.

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The arguments and the record thus do not provide the Court with an adequate framework for a detailed discussion of all the relevant factors that can be taken into account in determining the reasonableness of acting without a warrant. It suffices to say that the metabolization of alcohol in the bloodstream and the ensuing loss of evidence are among the factors that must be considered in deciding whether a warrant is required.

Other arguments advanced by the State and amici in support of a per se rule are unpersuasive. Their concern that a case-by-case approach to exigency will not provide adequate guidance to law enforcement officers may make the desire for a bright-line rule understandable, but the Fourth Amendment will not tolerate adoption of an overly broad categorical approach in this context. A fact-intensive, totality of the circumstances, approach is hardly unique within this Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. See, e.g., Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123-125. They also contend that the privacy interest implicated here is minimal. But motorists' diminished expectation of privacy does not diminish their privacy interest in preventing a government agent from piercing their skin. And though a blood test conducted in a medical setting by trained personnel is less intrusive than other bodily invasions, this Court has never retreated from its recognition that any compelled intrusion into the human body implicates significant, constitutionally protected privacy interests. Finally, the government's general interest in combating drunk driving does not justify departing from the warrant requirement without showing exigent circumstances that make securing a warrant impractical in a particular case.

People vs. RachoPEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, Appellee, vs. JACK RACHO y RAQUERO, AppellantG.R. No. 186529 August 3, 2010J. Nachura

On May 19, 2003, a confidential agent of the police transacted through cellular phone with appellant for the purchase of shabu. The agent reported the transaction to the police authorities who immediately formed a team to apprehend the appellant. The team members posted themselves along the national highway in Baler, Aurora, and at around 3:00 p.m. of the same day, a Genesis bus arrived in Baler. When appellant alighted from the

bus, the confidential agent pointed to him as the person he transacted with, and when the latter was about to board a tricycle, the team approached him and invited him to the police station as he was suspected of carrying shabu. When he pulled out his hands from his pants’ pocket, a white envelope slipped there from which, when opened, yielded a small sachet containing the suspected drug. The team then brought appellant to the police station for investigation and the confiscated specimen was marked in the presence of appellant. The field test and laboratory examinations on the contents of the confiscated sachet yielded positive results for methamphetamine hydrochloride.

Appellant was charged in two separate informations, one for violation of Section 5 of R.A. 9165, for transporting or delivering; and the second, of Section 11 of the same law for possessing, dangerous drugs. During the arraignment, appellant pleaded "Not Guilty" to both charges. On July 8, 2004, the RTC rendered a Joint Judgment convicting appellant of Violation of Section 5, Article II, R.A. 9165 but acquitted him of the charge of Violation of Section 11, Article II, R.A. 9165. On appeal, the CA affirmed the RTC decision. The appellant brought the case to SC assailing for the first time he legality of his arrest and the validity of the subsequent warrantless search.

Issue: Whether or not the appellant has a ground to assail the validity of his arrest.

Held:The long standing rule in this jurisdiction is that "reliable information" alone is not sufficient to justify a warrantless arrest. The rule requires, in addition, that the accused perform some overt act that would indicate that he has committed, is actually committing, or is attempting to commit an offense. There is no cogent reason to depart from this well-established doctrine.

Appellant herein was not committing a crime in the presence of the police officers. Neither did the arresting officers have personal knowledge of facts indicating that the person to be arrested had committed, was committing, or about to commit an offense. At the time of the arrest, appellant had just alighted from the Gemini bus and was waiting for a tricycle. Appellant was not acting in any suspicious manner that would engender a

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reasonable ground for the police officers to suspect and conclude that he was committing or intending to commit a crime. Were it not for the information given by the informant, appellant would not have been apprehended and no search would have been made, and consequently, the sachet of shabu would not have been confiscated.

Neither was the arresting officers impelled by any urgency that would allow them to do away with the requisite warrant. As testified to by Police Officer 1 Aurelio Iniwan, a member of the arresting team, their office received the "tipped information" on May 19, 2003. They likewise learned from the informant not only the appellant’s physical description but also his name. Although it was not certain that appellant would arrive on the same day (May 19), there was an assurance that he would be there the following day (May 20). Clearly, the police had ample opportunity to apply for a warrant.

WHEREFORE, premises considered, the Court of Appeals Decision dated May 22, 2008 in CA-G.R. CR-H.C. No. 00425 REVERSED and SET ASIDE. Appellant Jack Raquero Racho ACQUITTED for insufficiency of evidence.

Chimel v. California 395 U.S. 752 (1969)J. Stewart

Late in the afternoon of September 13, 1965, three police officers arrived at the Santa Ana, California, home of the petitioner with a warrant authorizing his arrest for the burglary of a coin shop. The officers knocked on the door, identified themselves to the petitioner's wife, and asked if they might come inside. She ushered them into the house, where they waited 10 or 15 minutes until the petitioner returned home from work. When the petitioner entered the house, one of the officers handed him the arrest warrant and asked for permission to "look around." The petitioner objected, but was advised that, "on the basis of the lawful arrest," the officers would nonetheless conduct a search. No search warrant had been issued. Accompanied by the petitioner's wife, the officers then looked through the entire three-bedroom house, including the attic, the garage, and a small workshop. In some rooms, the search was relatively cursory. In the master bedroom and sewing room,

however, the officers directed the petitioner's wife to open drawers and "to physically move contents of the drawers from side to side so that [they] might view any items that would have come from [the] burglary." After completing the search, they seized numerous items -- primarily coins, but also several medals, tokens, and a few other objects. The entire search took between 45 minutes and an hour.

Police officers, armed with an arrest warrant but not a search warrant, were admitted to petitioner's home by his wife, where they awaited petitioner's arrival. When he entered, he was served with the warrant. Although he denied the officers' request to "look around," they conducted a search of the entire house "on the basis of the lawful arrest." At petitioner's trial on burglary charges, items taken from his home were admitted over objection that they had been unconstitutionally seized. His conviction was affirmed by the California appellate courts, which held, despite their acceptance of petitioner's contention that the arrest warrant was invalid, that, since the arresting officers had procured the warrant "in good faith," and since, in any event, they had had sufficient information to constitute probable cause for the arrest, the arrest was lawful. The courts also held that the search was justified as incident to a valid arrest.

Issue:Where a defendant is lawfully arrested inside his home, is a warrantless search of the area beyond the defendant’s immediate control constitutional?

Held: Any search in an arrestee’s home beyond arrestee’s person and the area within his immediate control is unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Assuming the arrest was valid, the warrantless search of petitioner's house cannot be constitutionally justified as incident to that arrest.

(a) An arresting officer may search the arrestee's person to discover and remove weapons and to seize evidence to prevent its concealment or destruction, and may search the area "within the immediate control" of the person arrested, meaning the area from which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.

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(b) For the routine search of rooms other than that in which an arrest occurs, or for searching desk drawers or other closed or concealed areas in that room itself, absent well recognized exceptions, a search warrant is required.

(c) While the reasonableness of a search incident to arrest depends upon "the facts and circumstances -- the total atmosphere of the case," those facts and circumstances must be viewed in the light of established Fourth Amendment principles, and the only reasoned distinction is one between (1) a search of the person arrested and the area within his reach, and (2) more extensive searches.

(d) United Ste v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, and Harris v. United States,331 U. S. 145, on their facts, and insofar as the principles they stand for are inconsistent with this decision, are no longer to be followed.

(e) The scope of the search here was unreasonable under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, as it went beyond petitioner's person and the area from within which he might have obtained a weapon or something that could have been used as evidence against him, and there was no constitutional justification, in the absence of a search warrant, for extending the search beyond that area.

Contemporaneous searches incident to a lawful arrest are reasonable to seize weapons as well as prevent the destruction or concealment of evidence. Searches beyond the scope of these justifications are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

Dissent. Where there is probable cause to search and there is a clear danger that the items which are the subject of the search may be removed prior to police obtaining a search warrant, a warrantless search of the area beyond an arrestee’s immediate control is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

Concurrence. Given the variety of circumstances which police encounter, this decision will create additional burdens on law enforcement. Whether or not the warrant requirement will protect individual rights in each and every local situation is uncertain.

Nolasco vs. Cruz PanoCYNTHIA D. NOLASCO, MILA AGUILAR-ROQUE and WILLIE C. TOLENTINO, petitioners, vs. HON. ERNANI CRUZ PAÑO, Executive Judge, Regional Trial Court of Quezon City; HON. ANTONIO P. SANTOS, Presiding Judge, Branch XLII, Metropolitan Trial Court of Quezon City: HON. SERGIO F. APOSTOL, City Fiscal, Quezon City; HON. JUAN PONCE ENRILE, LT. GEN. FIDEL RAMOS and COL. JESUS ALTUNA, respondentsG.R. No. L-69803 October 8, 1985J. Melencio-Herrera

Milagros Aguilar-Roque was arrested together with Cynthia Nolasco by the Constabulary Security Group (CSG). Milagros had been wanted as a high-ranking officer of the CPP. The arrest took place at 11:30 a.m. of August 6, 1984. At noon of the same day, her premises were searched and 428 documents, a portable typewriter and 2 boxes were seized.

Earlier that day, Judge Cruz Paño issued a search warrant to be served at Aguilar-Roque’s leased residence allegedly an underground house of the CPP/NPA. On the basis of the documents seized, charges of subversion and rebellion by the CSG were filed by but the fiscal’s office merely charged her and Nolasco with illegal possession of subversive materials. Aguilar-Roque asked for suppression of the evidence on the ground that it was illegally obtained and that the search warrant is void because it is a general warrant since it does not sufficiently describe with particularity the things subject of the search and seizure, and that probable cause has not been properly established for lack of searching questions propounded to the applicant’s witness.

ISSUE: Whether or not the search warrant was valid.

HELD:NO. Section 3, Article IV of the Constitution, guarantees 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. It also specifically provides that no Search Warrant shall issue except upon probable cause to be

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determined by the Judge or such other responsible officer as may be authorized by law, 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.

It is at once evident that the foregoing Search Warrant authorizes the seizure of personal properties vaguely described and not particularized. It is an all- embracing description which includes everything conceivable regarding the Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front. It does not specify what the subversive books and instructions are; what the manuals not otherwise available to the public contain to make them subversive or to enable them to be used for the crime of rebellion. There is absent a definite guideline to the searching team as to what items might be lawfully seized thus giving the officers of the law discretion regarding what articles they should seize as, in fact, taken also were a portable typewriter and 2 wooden boxes.

It is thus in the nature of a general warrant and infringes on the constitutional mandate requiring particular description of the things to be seized. In the recent rulings of this Court, search warrants of similar description were considered null and void for being too general.

Search Warrant No. 80-84 issued on August 6, 1984 by respondent Executive Judge Ernani Cruz Paño annulled and set aside.

Anonymous Letter-Complaint against Atty. Miguel Morales, Clerk of Court, Metropolitan Trial Court of Manila A.M. No. P-08-2519 (Formerly A.M. OCA IPI No. 05-2155-PandAnonymous Letter-Complaint against Clerk of Court Atty. Henry P. Favorito of the Office of the Clerk of Court, Clerk of Court Atty. Miguel Morales of Branch 17, Clerk of Court Amie Grace Arreola of Branch 4, Administrative Officer III William Calda of the Office of the Clerk of Court and Stenographer Isabel Siwa of Branch 16, all of the Metropolitan Trial Court, Manila. A.M. No. P-08-2520 (Formerly A.M. OCA IPI No. 05-2156-P)

November 19, 2008J. Austria Martinez

In Re: Anonymous Letter-Complaint Against Atty. Miguel Morales, Clerk of Court, MeTCof Manila 19 November 2008 Austria-Martinez, J.Note: This is a consolidation of two administrative cases, but I believe it is only the first one(which deals with privacy) that is relevant for our purposes, and so it is the only one I’veincluded in this digest.FACTS: • The Office of the Court Administrator (OCA) received an unsigned, undated letter of complaint regarding Atty. Miguel Morales of the Office of the Clerk of Court (OCC). Theletter alleged that Atty. Morales was consuming his work hours filing and attending topersonal cases, and was using office supplies, equipment and utilities. • Deputy Court Administrator (DCA) Reuben Dela Cruz conducted a spot investigationand gained access to Morales’ personal computer. Pleadings to two of Atty. Morales’personal cases were found among the computer files. The computer was seized andtaken to the custody of the OCA. • Morales filed a motion for the release of his computer. The Court granted his motion butordered that the files be retrieved first. • Morales filed a letter-complaint addressed to then CJ Davide against DCA Dela Cruz for alleged conspiracy and culpable violation of the Consti. Morales asserted that the “raid”conducted by DCA Dela Cruz without search and seizure orders violated his right toprivacy and the articles seized should therefore be considered inadmissible.

Issue:Are the pleadings found in Atty. Morales’ personal computer admissible in the administrative case against him? No.

Held: DISMISSED for insufficiency of evidence. Article III Section 2 of the Constitution enshrines the inviolable right of the people to be secure in their persons and properties against unreasonable searches and seizures. Additionally, Article III Section 3(2) bars the admission of evidence obtained in violation of such right. Any violation of this right renders the evidence obtained inadmissible for any purpose in any proceeding.

One of the exceptions to the rule is consented warrantless search. DCA Dela Cruz claims that they were able to obtain the pleadings with Atty. Morales’ consent.

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However, the Court finds his assertion insufficient to make the present case fall under the exception. Consent to a search must be unequivocal, specific, intelligently given and uncontaminated by any duress or coercion. It must be shown by clear and convincing evidence.

To constitute a valid consent, it must be shown that: (1) The right exists, (2) That the persons involved had the knowledge, either actual or constructive, of the existence of the right, and (3) That the person had actual intention to relinquish the right.

In this case, it was not shown that Atty. Morales had an actual intention to relinquish his right. He may have agreed to opening his computer and printing the files during the spot investigation, but he immediately filed an administrative case against the DCA and his team, specifically invoking his right against unreasonable searches and seizures.

WHEREFORE, the Court finds Isabel Siwa, Court Stenographer of Branch 16, Metropolitan Trial Court, Manila, GUILTY of conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service and is FINED in the amount of P30,000.00 to be deducted from the money value of her leave credits which was set aside per Resolution dated October 12, 2005 in A.M No. 12096-Ret. entitled Application for Retirement Benefits under Section 13-A of R.A. No. 8291 of Ms. Isabel A. Siwa, Court Stenographer II, MeTC, Manila, Branch 16.

Atty. Henry P. Favorito, Clerk of Court of the Office of the Clerk of Court is REPRIMANDED for his failure to supervise the lending and rediscounting activites of Siwa which took place in the court's premises. The extortion charges against him are DISMISSED for lack of merit.

The charges against Atty. Miguel Morales, former Branch Clerk of Court, Branch 17, are DISMISSED for insufficiency of evidence. Deputy Court Administrator Reuben de la Cruz is advised to be more circumspect in the performance of his duties.

The charges against William Calda, Administrative Officer of the Office of the Clerk of Court, and Amie Grace Arreola, formerly Branch Clerk of Court of Branch 4 now Clerk of Court of Branch 30, both of the Metropolitan Trial Court of Manila, are DISMISSED for lack of merit.

The Office of the Court Administrator is DIRECTED to conduct an audit investigation on Isabel Siwa's transcription of stenographic notes in view of the finding of Judge Ma. Theresa Dolores C. Gomez-Estoesta in her Investigation Report dated September 1, 2006 in A.M. No. P-08-2519 and A.M. P-08-2520 (formerly A.M. OCA IPI No. 05-2155-P and A.M. OCA IPI No. 05-2156-P) that Siwa has not submitted a complete transcription of stenographic notes in several cases assigned to her. Said matter shall be treated as a separate case, to be given a new docket number and assigned to a new ponente for final resolution.

Polo vs. DavidBriccio “Ricky” A. Pollo v. Karina Constantino-DavidG.R. No. 181881, October 18, 2011 J. Villarama, Jr.

Nature of case: This case involves a search of office computer assigned to a government employee who was then charged administratively and was eventually dismissed from the service. The employee’s personal files stored in the computer were used by the government employer as evidence of his misconduct.

A search by a government employer of an employee’s office is justified at inception when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that it will turn up evidence that the employee is guilty of work-related misconduct.

Pursuant to a letter-complaint anonymously sent by a concerned government employee about an employee of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) who has been helping accused government employees with a pending case in the CSC, Chairperson David of the CSC issued a memo directing a team to conduct an investigation and specifically "to back up all the files in the computers found in the Mamamayan Muna (PALD) and Legal divisions."

Evaluating the subject documents obtained from petitioner’s personal files, Chairperson David observed that the draft pleadings or letters in connection with administrative cases in the CSC and other tribunals obtained from the computer assigned to Petitioner Briccio Pollo invariably raises the

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presumption that he was the one responsible or had a hand in their drafting or preparation since the computer of origin was within his direct control and disposition. Petitioner Pollo denied that he is the person referred to in the anonymous letter-complaint because he is not a lawyer and neither is he "lawyering" for people with cases in the CSC. He pointed out that though government property, the temporary use and ownership of the computer issued under a Memorandum of Receipt (MR) is ceded to the employee who may exercise all attributes of ownership, including its use for personal purposes. In view of the illegal search, the files/documents copied from his computer without his consent is thus inadmissible as evidence, being "fruits of a poisonous tree."

The CSC issued a Resolution finding Pollo guilty of Dishonesty, Grave Misconduct, Conduct Prejudicial to the Best Interest of the Service and Violation of Republic Act 6713. In its Resolution, the CSC relied on American jurisprudence, citing the leading case of O’Connor v. Ortega as authority for the view that government agencies, in their capacity as employers, rather than law enforcers, could validly conduct search and seizure in the governmental workplace without meeting the "probable cause" or warrant requirement for search and seizure, and the ruling in United States v. Mark L. Simons which declared that the federal agency’s computer use policy foreclosed any inference of reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of its employees. Though the Court therein recognized that such policy did not, at the same time, erode the respondent’s legitimate expectation of privacy in the office in which the computer was installed, still, the warrantless search of the employee’s office was upheld as valid because a government employer is entitled to conduct a warrantless search pursuant to an investigation of work-related misconduct provided the search is reasonable in its inception and scope.

HELD:In this inquiry, the relevant surrounding circumstances to consider include “(1) the employee’s relationship to the item seized; (2) whether the item was in the immediate control of the employee when it was seized; and (3) whether the employee took actions to maintain his privacy in the item.”  These factors are relevant to both the subjective and objective prongs of the reasonableness inquiry, and the two questions together must be considered together.

The Court answers the first in the negative.  Petitioner failed to prove that he had an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy either in his office or government-issued computer which contained his personal files.  Petitioner did not allege that he had a separate enclosed office which he did not share with anyone, or that his office was always locked and not open to other employees or visitors.  Moreover, even assuming arguendo, in the absence of allegation or proof of the aforementioned factual circumstances, that petitioner had at least a subjective expectation of privacy in his computer as he claims, such is negated by the presence of policy regulating the use of office computers, as in Simons.           The CSC in this case had implemented a policy that put its employees on notice that they have no expectation of privacy in anything they create, store, send or receive on the office computers, and that the CSC may monitor the use of the computer resources using both automated or human means.  This implies that on-the-spot inspections may be done to ensure that the computer resources were used only for such legitimate business purposes.           As to the second point of inquiry on the reasonableness of the search conducted on petitioner’s computer, the Court answers in the affirmative.          A search by a government employer of an employee’s office is justified at inception when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that it will turn up evidence that the employee is guilty of work-related misconduct.   

Under the facts obtaining, the search conducted on petitioner’s computer was justified at its inception and scope.

Petitioner’s claim of violation of his constitutional right to privacy must necessarily fail.  His other argument invoking the privacy of communication and correspondence under Section 3(1), Article III of the 1987 Constitution is also untenable considering the recognition accorded to certain legitimate intrusions into the privacy of employees in the government workplace under the aforecited authorities.  We likewise find no merit in   his contention that O’Connor and Simons are not relevant because the present case does not involve a criminal offense like child

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pornography. As already mentioned, the search of petitioner’s computer was justified there being reasonable ground for suspecting that the files stored therein would yield incriminating evidence relevant to the investigation being conducted by CSC as government employer of such misconduct subject of the anonymous complaint.  This situation clearly falls under the exception to the warrantless requirement in administrative searches defined in O’Connor.

No error or grave abuse of discretion was committed by the CA in affirming the CSC’s ruling that petitioner is guilty of grave misconduct, dishonesty, conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service, and violation of R.A. No. 6713. The gravity of these offenses justified the imposition on petitioner of the ultimate penalty of dismissal with all its accessory penalties, pursuant to existing rules and regulations. WHEREFORE, the petition for review on certiorari is DENIED.

RILEY v. CALIFORNIACertiorari to the court of appeal of California, fourth appellate district, division oneNo. 13–132Argued April 29, 2014—Decided June 25, 2014C.J., Roberts

In No. 13–132, petitioner Riley was stopped for a traffic violation, which eventually led to his arrest on weapons charges. An officer searching Riley incident to the arrest seized a cell phone from Riley’s pants pocket. The officer accessed information on the phone and noticed the repeated use of a term associated with a street gang. At the police station two hours later, a detective specializing in gangs further examined the phone’s digital contents. Based in part on photographs and videos that the detective found, the State charged Riley in connection with a shooting that had occurred a few weeks earlier and sought an enhanced sentence based on Riley’s gang membership. Riley moved to suppress all evidence that the police had obtained from his cell phone. The trial court denied the motion, and Riley was convicted. The California Court of Appeal affirmed.

          In No. 13–212, respondent Wurie was arrested after police observed him participate in an apparent drug sale. At the police station, the officers seized a cell phone from Wurie’s person and noticed that the phone was receiving multiple calls from a

source identified as “my house” on its external screen. The officers opened the phone, accessed its call log, determined the number associated with the “my house” label, and traced that number to what they suspected was Wurie’s apartment. They secured a search warrant and found drugs, a firearm and ammunition, and cash in the ensuing search. Wurie was then charged with drug and firearm offenses. He moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the search of the apartment. The District Court denied the motion, and Wurie was convicted. The First Circuit reversed the denial of the motion to suppress and vacated the relevant convictions.

Held: The police generally may not, without a warrant, search digital information on a cell phone seized from an individual who has been arrested. Pp. 5–28.

     (a) A warrantless search is reasonable only if it falls within a specific exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. See Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ___, ___. The well-established exception at issue here applies when a warrantless search is conducted incident to a lawful arrest.

     Three related precedents govern the extent to which officers may search property found on or near an arrestee. Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 , requires that a search incident to arrest be limited to the area within the arrestee’s immediate control, where it is justified by the interests in officer safety and in preventing evidence destruction. In United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 , the Court applied the Chimel analysis to a search of a cigarette pack found on the arrestee’s person. It held that the risks identified in Chimel are present in all custodial arrests, 414 U. S., at 235, even when there is no specific concern about the loss of evidence or the threat to officers in a particular case, id., at 236. The trilogy concludes with Arizona v. Gant, 556 U. S. 332 , which permits searches of a car where the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance of the passenger compartment, or where it is reasonable to believe that evidence of the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle, id., at 343.

     (b) The Court declines to extend Robinson’s categorical rule to searches of data stored on cell phones. Absent more precise guidance from the founding era, the Court generally determines whether to exempt a given type of search from the warrant requirement “by assessing, on the one hand, the degree to

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which it intrudes upon an individual’s privacy and, on the other, the degree to which it is needed for the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.” Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U. S. 295 . That balance of interests supported the search incident to arrest exception in Robinson. But a search of digital information on a cell phone does not further the government interests identified in Chimel, and implicates substantially greater individual privacy interests than a brief physical search.

          (1) The digital data stored on cell phones does not present either Chimel risk.

               (i) Digital data stored on a cell phone cannot itself be used as a weapon to harm an arresting officer or to effectuate the arrestee’s escape. Officers may examine the phone’s physical aspects to ensure that it will not be used as a weapon, but the data on the phone can endanger no one. To the extent that a search of cell phone data might warn officers of an impending danger, e.g., that the arrestee’s confederates are headed to the scene, such a concern is better addressed through consideration of case-specific exceptions to the warrant requirement, such as exigent circumstances. See, e.g., Warden, Md. Penitentiary v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294 –299.

               (ii) The United States and California raise concerns about the destruction of evidence, arguing that, even if the cell phone is physically secure, information on the cell phone remains vulnerable to remote wiping and data encryption. As an initial matter, those broad concerns are distinct from Chimel’s focus on a defendant who responds to arrest by trying to conceal or destroy evidence within his reach. The briefing also gives little indication that either problem is prevalent or that the opportunity to perform a search incident to arrest would be an effective solution. And, at least as to remote wiping, law enforcement currently has some technologies of its own for combatting the loss of evidence. Finally, law enforcement’s remaining concerns in a particular case might be addressed by responding in a targeted manner to urgent threats of remote wiping, see Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U. S. ___, ___, or by taking action to disable a phone’s locking mechanism in order to secure the scene, see Illinois v. McArthur, 531 U. S. 326 –333.

          (2) A conclusion that inspecting the contents of an arrestee’s pockets works no substantial additional intrusion on

privacy beyond the arrest itself may make sense as applied to physical items, but more substantial privacy interests are at stake when digital data is involved.

               (i) Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects that might be carried on an arrestee’s person. Notably, modern cell phones have an immense storage capacity. Before cell phones, a search of a person was limited by physical realities and generally constituted only a narrow intrusion on privacy. But cell phones can store millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures, or hundreds of videos. This has several interrelated privacy consequences. First, a cell phone collects in one place many distinct types of information that reveal much more in combination than any isolated record. Second, the phone’s capacity allows even just one type of information to convey far more than previously possible. Third, data on the phone can date back for years. In addition, an element of pervasiveness characterizes cell phones but not physical records. A decade ago officers might have occasionally stumbled across a highly personal item such as a diary, but today many of the more than 90% of American adults who own cell phones keep on their person a digital record of nearly every aspect of their lives..

               (ii) The scope of the privacy interests at stake is further complicated by the fact that the data viewed on many modern cell phones may in fact be stored on a remote server. Thus, a search may extend well beyond papers and effects in the physical proximity of an arrestee, a concern that the United States recognizes but cannot definitively foreclose.

     (c) Fallback options offered by the United States and California are flawed and contravene this Court’s general preference to provide clear guidance to law enforcement through categorical rules. See Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692, n. 19. One possible rule is to import the Gant standard from the vehicle context and allow a warrantless search of an arrestee’s cell phone whenever it is reasonable to believe that the phone contains evidence of the crime of arrest. That proposal is not appropriate in this context, and would prove no practical limit at all when it comes to cell phone searches. Another possible rule is to restrict the scope of a cell phone search to information relevant to the crime, the arrestee’s identity, or officer safety. That proposal would again impose few

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meaningful constraints on officers. Finally, California suggests an analogue rule, under which officers could search cell phone data if they could have obtained the same information from a pre-digital counterpart. That proposal would allow law enforcement to search a broad range of items contained on a phone even though people would be unlikely to carry such a variety of information in physical form, and would launch courts on a difficult line-drawing expedition to determine which digital files are comparable to physical records.

     (d) It is true that this decision will have some impact on the ability of law enforcement to combat crime. But the Court’s holding is not that the information on a cell phone is immune from search; it is that a warrant is generally required before a search. The warrant requirement is an important component of the Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, and warrants may be obtained with increasing efficiency. In addition, although the search incident to arrest exception does not apply to cell phones, the continued availability of the exigent circumstances exception may give law enforcement a justification for a warrantless search in particular cases.

No. 13–132, reversed and remanded; No. 13–212, affirmed.

ARREST

People vs YadaoPEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES VS. HON. DELA TORRE-

YADAO, ET AL.G.R. No. 162144-54 ; 13 November 2012

Abad, J.

FACTS:In the early morning of May 18, 1995, the combined forces of the Philippine National Police’s Anti-Bank Robbery and Intelligence Task Group (PNP ABRITG) composed of Task Force Habagat, then headed by Police Chief Superintendent Panfilo M. Lacson killed 11 suspected members of the Kuratong Baleleng Gang along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. Subsequently, SPO2

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Eduardo Delos Reyes of the Criminal Investigation Command told the press that it was a summary execution, not a shoot-out between the police and those who were slain. After investigation, the Deputy Ombudsman for Military Affairs absolved all the police officers involved. On review, however, the Office of the Ombudsman reversed the finding and filed charges of murder against the police officers involved before the Sandiganbayan. On March 29, 1999 the RTC of Quezon City ordered the provisional dismissal of the cases for lack of probable cause to hold the accused for trial following the recantation of the principal prosecution witnesses and the desistance of the private complainants.

The case was reopened in March 27, 2001 but the CA rendered a Decision, granting Lacson’s petition on the ground of double jeopardy but on appeal to the SC, the latter directed the RTC to try the case. It was re-raffled to branch 81 presided by Judge Yadao.  Yadao in 2003 junked the murder case against Lacson and other police officials for lack of probable cause. On March 3, 2004 the prosecution filed the present special civil action of certiorari.

ISSUE:Whether or not Judge Yadao gravely abused her discretion when she dismissed the criminal actions on the ground of lack of probable cause HELD:            The prosecution claims that Judge Yadao gravely abused her discretion when she set the motions for determination of probable cause for hearing, deferred the issuance of warrants of arrest, and allowed the defense to mark its evidence and argue its case. The general rule of course is that the judge is not required, when determining probable cause for the issuance of warrants of arrests, to conduct a de novo hearing. The judge only needs to personally review the initial determination of the prosecutor finding a probable cause to see if it is supported by substantial evidence. But here, the prosecution conceded that their own witnesses tried to explain in their new affidavits the inconsistent statements that they earlier submitted to the Office of the Ombudsman. Consequently, it was not unreasonable for Judge Yadao, for the purpose of determining probable cause based on those affidavits, to hold a hearing and examine the inconsistent statements and related documents that the

witnesses themselves brought up and were part of the records. The SC held that the evidence on record clearly fails to establish probable cause against the respondents.           The prosecution points out that, rather than dismiss the criminal action outright, Judge Yadao should have ordered the panel of prosecutors to present additional evidence pursuant to Section 6, Rule 112 of the Rules of Court. Section 6, Rule 112 of the Rules of Court gives the trial court three options upon the filing of the criminal information: (1) dismiss the case if the evidence on record clearly failed to establish probable cause; (2) issue a warrant of arrest if it finds probable cause; and (3) order the prosecutor to present additional evidence within five days from notice in case of doubt as to the existence of probable cause. But the option to order the prosecutor to present additional evidence is not mandatory. The court’s first option under the above is for it to “immediately dismiss the case if the evidence on record clearly fails to establish probable cause.” That is the situation here: the evidence on record clearly fails to establish probable cause against the respondents.           In the absence of probable cause to indict respondents for the crime of multiple murder, they should be insulated from the tribulations, expenses and anxiety of a public trial.

Court DISMISSED petition and AFFIRMED assailed RTC orders.

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