Another plea for the Supreme Court (SC) to reform the procedures in the issuance of search warrants by the trial courts has been aired.
This time the request was made by more than 100 lawyers, some of them law school deans, who told the SC that the number of deaths during the execution of search warrants has grown to an alarming level.
They said the SC should step in to ensure that judicial processes are not abused to violate the constitutional rights of citizens.
Among their proposals to reform the issuance of search warrants are:
1. “Review of A.M. (Administrative Matter) No. 03-8-02-SC which authorizes Executive Judges of Manila and Quezon City or their Vice Executive Judges to issue, in special criminal cases, ‘remote or roving’ search warrants that can be served anywhere in the country.
2. “Applications for search warrants in the special criminal cases stated in A.M. No. 03-8-02-SC must be allowed to be filed only with the nearest court outside the locality where the place to be searched is located but within the judicial region of that place.
3. “Requirement that applicants for search warrants must certify that they have not previously applied for a warrant in another court. If the same application for search warrant has been previously denied by another court, the police will be required to attach the records and order of the previous court.
4. “Limitation on the number of search warrant applications to be heard by a judge and prohibiting wholesale applications of search warrants that will not afford judges the opportunity to conduct a thorough scrutiny of the application and conduct searching questions on the applicants and their witnesses.
5. “Requirement that searches should be undertaken during office hours and not in the middle of the night and the deployment of body cameras or video recording devices to record the entire police operation, from initial entry to its conclusion.
6. “Providing a procedure for the person/s subject of the search and by independent witnesses to confirm the veracity of any video recording. This could also include requiring a designated prosecutor, subject to security protocols, to accompany and witness the whole operation from the start to its conclusion.
7. “Prohibition against any restraint, relocation, or arrest of the subject of the search or other persons unless they are engaged in the actual commission of an offense or there are compelling reasons to use reasonable force in implementing the search.
8. “Mandating that in search warrants that resulted in death during the implementation should be subject to automatic review by the Supreme Court. The Court may consider including or designating the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the Commission on Human Rights, among others, to be part of the review process.”
They cited a case of search warrants by a Cebu court led to the death of 14 farmers in Negros Oriental on March 30, 2019. The applicant for these warrants was the Philippine National Police (PNP) in Central Visayas then headed by Gen. Debold M. Sinas, now PNP chief.
They also said a series of warrants were issued by Quezon City courts starting November 2019 also led to the death or arrest of activists in Manila, Bacolod City and other provinces.
The latest of these killings were the deaths of nine indigenous people in Iloilo called “Tumandok” in December 2020 and the deaths of nine activists in Calabarzon in March 2021, “on the claim of the police that they all fought back during the implementation of the warrant,” they said.
The letter and proposals to the SC were initially drafted by National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) Chair Neri Colmenares and President Edre Olalia.
Similar pleas have been aired before the SC by individual lawyers and members of other lawyers’ group.
Karapatan, a support group for families of political prisoners, has also aired the same request.