THE Supreme Court (SC) reminded authorities not to trample on the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the people in its efforts to eradicate the country’s problem on the proliferation of illegal drugs.
In a 35-page ruling penned by Associate Justice Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa, the SC decided to reverse and set aside the decision issued by the Court of Appeals (CA) which affirmed the Regional Trial Court’s decision convicting a certain Jerry Sapla on charges of transportation of illegal drugs.
Sapla was arrested by police authorities in January 2014 with four bricks or almost 4,000 grams of marijuana while on board a jeepney in Tabuk City, Kalinga province.
Sapla was subsequently convicted by the Regional Trial Court of Tabuk City on January 9, 2017, which was affirmed by the CA in a ruling issued on April 24, 2018.
In reversing the decisions, the SC held that law enforcers cannot conduct an invasive and warrantless search of a vehicle based on unverified information or tip relayed by an anonymous informant.
The Court pointed out that while it recognizes the need for an aggressive stance against the menace of illegal drugs, it should not be done in such a way that sacrifice theBill of Right of an individual, especially of the right against unreasonable searches and seizures.
“By disregarding basic constitutional rights as a means to curtail the proliferation of illegal drugs, instead of protecting the general welfare, oppositely, the general welfare is viciously assaulted. In other words, when the Constitution is disregarded, the battle waged against illegal drugs become a self-defeating and self-destructive enterprise,” the SC explained.
“A battle against illegal drugs that tramples on the rights of the people is not a war on drugs, it is a war against the people,” the SC said.
The SC ruled that unverified information from anonymous informant alone is not sufficient to constitute probable cause to justify the conduct of extensive and intrusive search by law enforcers inside a vehicle.
It added that police must have personal knowledge leading to suspicion, and not rely on suspicion of another, adding that in prior cases where it validated warrantless searches and seizures on the basis of tipped information, the seizures and arrests were not merely and exclusively based on the initial tips
but were also prompted by other attendant circumstances.
“Any person can easily hide in a shroud of anonymity and simply send false and fabricated information to the police. Unscrupulous persons can effortlessly take advantage of this and easily harass and intimidate another by simply giving false information to the police, allowing the latter to invasively search the vehicle or premises of such person on the sole basis of a bogus tip,” the SC declared.
“On the side of the authorities, unscrupulous law enforcement agents can easily justify the infiltration of a citizen’s vehicle or residence, violating his or her right to privacy, by merely claiming that the raw intelligence was received or if the information received was fabricated,” it added.
Furthermore, the SC held that “exclusive reliance on information tipped by informants goes against the very nature of probable cause since a single hint hardly amounts to the existence of such facts and circumstances which would lead to a reasonably discreet and prudent man to believe that an offense has been committed.”
It said that any person can easily hide in anonymity and simply send false and fabricated information to the police to harass or even intimidate another by giving false information to the police allowing the latter to search the vehicle or premises of such person based on bogus tips.