YES, A SEARCH warrant signed by a judge can now result in death, even multiple deaths.
As this is being written, nine people have been reported dead after policemen served search warrants in the Southern Tagalog region last Sunday. Six others were arrested.
The search warrants were issued by trial courts stationed in the City of Manila. The subjects belong to progressive and activist groups.
The dead have outnumbered the living. This petrifying fact alone raises a hundred question marks. Foremost is – was this a scrupulous effort to comply with a court process, or were these people targeted for execution?
A troubling tidbit about the raids is that they were conducted a mere two days after President Rodrigo Duterte told an audience made up of soldiers and policemen to “finish off” communist rebels.
In a speech last March 5, the President told his audience to “kill them right away. Ignore human rights. That is my order. I’ll be the one going to jail. No problem.”
A search warrant is nothing more than a tool to secure evidence of a crime. It is not supposed to ignite violence, and result in physical injuries or death. In fact, safeguards have been enacted to ensure that its execution is peaceful and in accord with the Constitution that requires utmost respect of people’s homes, papers, and effects.
Courts of law may not be trigger-happy in issuing search warrants at the instance of law enforcement agents.
In assessing an application, the judge must always remember that the Constitution requires him to ensure inviolability of the people’s right to be “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against searches and seizures of whatever nature and for any purpose…”
This duty must not be taken lightly. A search warrant application is normally made without the knowledge of the respondent.
This means that the respondent will not have the chance to rebut the allegations, or even cross-examine the applicant and his witnesses. This immense task falls singularly on the shoulders of the judge who may not perfunctorily grant the application without subjecting the applicant to searching questions and satisfy the judicial records of the existence of probable cause.
The constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches is always interpreted in favor of the individual.
The obverse is true. It is the duty of government to make sure that legal requirements are strictly observed. The presumption of regularity in the performance of official functions does not apply.
Judges cannot allow a gradual but sure erosion of the rights secured by the document they are sworn to protect – the Constitution.
What then if search warrants are a dime a dozen and fatal in their effects? Can we truly say they are the products of utmost circumspection as commanded by the law?
Judges do not live in a vacuum. They know, or ought to know, of the recent trail of blood left by the police in implementing search warrants.
It was a search warrant that was used to justify the pre-dawn entry into the Parojinog household in Ozamiz in July 2017. A lot of people were killed in that raid, including the Ozamiz mayor, his wife, his brother, and 14 others who were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
At least nine people belonging to the Tumanduk were killed in Tapaz, Capiz last Dec. 30, 2020 as police agents were enforcing search warrants against them.
More examples can be pointed out, like the killing of Albuera mayor Rolando Espinosa who was served a search warrant while inside a jail facility in Leyte.
The judge who issued the warrant against Espinosa was administratively charged because jail facilities are not private dwellings that qualify under the protection of the right to privacy. The warrant legitimized the violent entry.
Indeed, a piece of paper, supposed to be a mere tool of discovery, can lead to a tragic chain of events beyond the control of the issuing judge./PN
