A lawyers’ organization said that judges who haphazardly issue search warrants and law enforcers who misuse and abuse their implementation and service to suspected criminal offenders should be held accountable.
In a statement, the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) through its President Edre U. Olalia said:
“Indeed, there must be ultimate accountability and redress against all those who make or enable these shotgun acts,” National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) president Edre U. Olalia said.
Several months ago, the Supreme Court (SC) had ordered that trial courts can only issue arrest or search warrants within their territorial jurisdiction. The ruling had revoked authority to executive judges of some trial courts, like those in Manila and Quezon City, to issue warrants that can be served anywhere in the country.
NUPL issued the statement in reaction to the quashal of the search warrants issued against Erlindo Baez Custodio whose criminal charges were dismissed. He was ordered released.
Tanauan City regional trial court (RTC) Judge Jose Ricuerdo P. Flores dismissed the charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives filed against Custodio who was arrested during the joint police-military operations in Southern Luzon provinces where nine activists died last March 7.
Granted by Judge Flores was the motion to dismiss the charges, to nullify the search warrants, to suppress the evidence, and to recall the arrest order filed by Custodio.
The RTC decision stated that in the case of the search warrants served on Custodio, “the warrants failed to specifically and sufficiently describe the place to be searched.”
The decision said: “There is no description of the location of the accused’s house sufficient to distinguish it from other houses in Barangay San Vicente, Sto. Tomas City, Batangas. There is great doubt as to the location of the intended subject of the search warrant and the seizure operation.”
At the same time, Judge Flores agreed with Custodio that the Manila RTC judge who issued the search warrants did not make a thorough examination of the police application for search warrants.
“There is nothing from which the Court can infer whether the requisite examination was made and from which the factual basis for the probable cause to issue the search warrant was derived,” Flores stressed.
“While this latest court ruling is not binding on other courts, it has a strong persuasive effect and provides useful guideposts or previews in resolving similar or related cases,” Olalia said.
“As a whole, this judicial rebuke also affirms the danger of the now abandoned pernicious practice of wholesale and roving or imported search warrants from far away courts,” the lawyer said.
He said the court ruling is “an indubitable signal to the authorities that these reckless and malicious legal schemes against activists will not be gifted with partial and subservient judicial approvals.”
He also said that the case of Custodio is “a continuing series of similar quashals of questionable search warrants all over the country.”
He pointed out that the ruling on Custodio’s case is “a validation of what we have been saying all along - that they are not only either improvidently, imprudently, negligently or haphazardly issued inconsistent with mandatory constitutional and statutory requisites and safeguards but proves how the law and legal processes can be misused or abused for further violations of basic rights and as tools for political repression.”