PEOPLE v. GERRJAN MANAGO Y ACUT, GR No. 212340, 2016-08-17
Facts:
On April 10, 2007, an Information was filed before the RTC,
charging Manago of Possession of Dangerous Drugs, defined and penalized under
Section 11, Article II of RA 9165.
According to the prosecution, at around 9:30 in the evening
of March 15, 2007, PO3 Antonio Din of
the PNP Mobile Patrol Group was waiting to get a haircut at Jonas Borces Beauty
Parlor when 2 persons entered and declared a hold-up. PO3 Din identified
himself as a police officer and exchanged gun shots with the two suspects.
After the shootout, one of the suspects boarded a motorcycle, while the other
boarded a red Toyota Corolla. The plate numbers of the vehicles were noted by
PO3 Din.
After the incident, PO3 Din received word from Barangay
Tanod Florentine Cano, that the robbery suspects were last seen in Barangay Del
Rio Pit-os. Thus, S/Insp. George Ylanan conducted an investigation in the said
barangay, and discovered that before the robbery incident, Manago told Cano
that three persons - namely, Rico Lumampas, Arvin Cadastra, and Allan Sordiano
- are his employees in his roasted chicken business, and they were to stay in
Manago's house. Further, upon verification of the getaway vehicles with the
Land Transportation Office, the police officers found out that the motorcycle
was registered in Manago's name, while the red Toyota Corolla was registered in
the name of Zest-O Corporation, where Manage worked as a District Sales
Manager.
With all the foregoing information at hand, the police
officers, comprised of a team including PO3 Din and S/Insp. Ylanan, conducted a
"hot pursuit" operation 1 day after the robbery incident, by setting
up a checkpoint in Sitio Panagdait. At around 9:30 in the evening of even date,
the red Toyota Corolla, then being driven by Manago, passed through the
checkpoint, prompting the police officers to stop the vehicle. The police
officers then ordered Manago to disembark, and thereafter, conducted a thorough
search of the vehicle. As the search produced no contraband, the police
officers then frisked Manago, resulting in the discovery of 1 plastic sachet
containing a white crystalline substance suspected to be methamphetamine
hydrochloride or shabu. The police officers seized the plastic pack, arrested
Manago, informed him of his constitutional rights, and brought him and the
plastic pack to their headquarters. Upon reaching the headquarters, S/Insp.
Ylanan turned over the seized plastic pack to PO3 Joel Taboada, who in turn,
prepared a request for a laboratory examination of the same. SPO1 Felix Gabijan
then delivered the said sachet and request to Forensic Chemist Jude Daniel
Mendoza of the PNP Crime Laboratory, who, after conducting an examination,
confirmed that the sachet contained methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu.
In his defense, Manago denied possessing the plastic pack
recovered by the police officers. He claimed that at around 11:50 in the
evening of March 16, 2007, he was about to start his vehicle and was on his way
home from the office when a pick-up truck stopped in front of his car. Three police
officers armed with long firearms disembarked from the said track. One of the
officers knocked on the door of Manago's vehicle and asked for his driver's
license, to which Manago complied. When the same officer saw Manago's name on
the license, the former uttered "mao na ni (this is him)." Manago was
then ordered to sit at the back of his car as the vehicle was driven by one of
the police officers directly to the Cebu City Police Station. After arriving at
the police station, Manago was interrogated about who the robbers were and to
divulge their whereabouts so that no criminal charges would be filed against
him. Manago claimed that he requested for a phone call with his lawyer, as well
as a copy of the warrant for his arrest, but both requests went unheeded. After
he was dispossessed of his laptop, wallet, and 2 mobile phones, he was then
photographed and placed in a detention cell. Thereafter, he was brought to the
Cebu City Prosecutor's Office where he was charged with, among others, illegal
possession of shabu.
Issues:
whether or not Manage's conviction for violation of Section
11, Article II of RA 9165 should be upheld.
Ruling:
Section 2, Article III of the 1987 Constitution mandates
that a search and seizure must be carried out through or on the strength of a
judicial warrant predicated upon the existence of probable cause, absent which
such search and seizure becomes "unreasonable" within the meaning of
the said constitutional provision. To protect the people from unreasonable
searches and seizures, Section 3 (2), Article III of the 1987 Constitution
provides that evidence obtained and confiscated on the occasion of such
unreasonable searches and seizures are deemed tainted and should be excluded
for being the proverbial fruit of a poisonous tree. In other words, evidence
obtained from unreasonable searches and seizures shall be inadmissible in
evidence for any purpose in any proceeding.
One of the recognized exceptions to the need of a warrant
before a search may be effected is a search incidental to a lawful arrest. In
this instance, the law requires that there first be a lawful arrest before a
search can be made — the process cannot be reversed.
There are three (3) instances when warrantless arrests may
be lawfully effected. These are: (a) an arrest of a suspect in flagrante delicto;
(b) an arrest of a suspect where, based on personal knowledge of the arresting
officer, there is probable cause that said suspect was the perpetrator of a
crime which had just been committed; and (c) an arrest of a prisoner who has
escaped from custody serving final judgment or temporarily confined during the
pendency of his case or has escaped while being transferred from one
confinement to another.
In warrantless arrests made pursuant to Section 5 (b), it is
essential that the element of personal knowledge must be coupled with the
element of immediacy; otherwise, the arrest may be nullified, and resultantly,
the items yielded through the search incidental thereto will be rendered
inadmissible in consonance with the exclusionary rule of the 1987 Constitution.
In Pestilos v. Generoso, the Court explained the requirement
of immediacy as the clincher in the element of "personal knowledge of
facts or circumstances" is the required element of immediacy within which
these facts or circumstances should be gathered. This required time element
acts as a safeguard to ensure that the police officers have gathered the facts
or perceived the circumstances within a very limited time frame. This
guarantees that the police officers would have no time to base their probable
cause finding on facts or circumstances obtained after an exhaustive
investigation.
The reason for the element of the immediacy is this - as the
time gap from the commission of the crime to the arrest widens, the pieces of
information gathered are prone to become contaminated and subjected to external
factors, interpretations and hearsay. On the other hand, with the element of
immediacy imposed under Section 5 (b), Rule 113 of the Revised Rules of
Criminal Procedure, the police officer's determination of probable cause would
necessarily be limited to raw or uncontaminated facts or circumstances,
gathered as they were within a very limited period of time. The same provision
adds another safeguard with the requirement of probable cause as the standard
for evaluating these facts of circumstances before the police officer could effect
a valid warrantless arrest.
The foregoing circumstances show that while the element of
personal knowledge under Section 5 (b) above was present - given that PO3 Din
actually saw the March 15, 2007 robbery incident and even engaged the armed
robbers in a shootout - the required element of immediacy was not met. This is
because, at the time the police officers effected the warrantless arrest upon
Manago's person, investigation and verification proceedings were already
conducted, which consequently yielded sufficient information on the suspects of
the March 15, 2007 robbery incident. As the Court sees it, the information the
police officers had gathered therefrom would have been enough for them to
secure the necessary warrants against the robbery suspects. However, they opted
to conduct a "hot pursuit" operation which - considering the lack of
immediacy - unfortunately failed to meet the legal requirements therefor. Thus,
there being no valid warrantless arrest under the "hot pursuit"
doctrine, the CA erred in ruling that Manago was lawfully arrested.
In Caballes v. People, the Court explained the concept of
warrantless searches on moving vehicles
Highly regulated by the government, the vehicle's inherent
mobility reduces expectation of privacy especially when its transit in public
thoroughfares furnishes a highly reasonable suspicion amounting to probable
cause that the occupant committed a criminal activity. Thus, the rules
governing search and seizure have over the years been steadily liberalized
whenever a moving vehicle is the object of the search on the basis of practicality.
We might add that a warrantless search of a moving vehicle
is justified on the ground that it is not practicable to secure a warrant
because the vehicle can be quickly moved out of the locality or jurisdiction in
which the warrant must be sought.
A variant of searching moving vehicles without a warrant may
entail the setup of military or police checkpoints - as in this case - which,
based on jurisprudence, are not illegal per se for as long as its necessity is
justified by the exigencies of public order and conducted in a way least
intrusive to motorists. Case law further states that routine inspections in
checkpoints are not regarded as violative of an individual's right against
unreasonable searches, and thus, permissible, if limited to the following: (a)
where the officer merely draws aside the curtain of a vacant vehicle which is
parked on the public fair grounds; (b) simply looks into a vehicle; (c) flashes
a light therein without opening the car's doors; (d) where the occupants are not
subjected to a physical or body search; (e) where the inspection of the
Vehicles is limited to a visual search or visual inspection; and (e) where the
routine check is conducted in a fixed area.
Routine inspections do not give police officers carte blanche
discretion to conduct warrantless searches in the absence of probable cause.
When a vehicle is stopped and subjected to an extensive search - as opposed to
a mere routine inspection - such a warrantless search has been held to be valid
only as long as the officers conducting the search have reasonable or probable
cause to believe before the search that they will find the instrumentality or
evidence pertaining to a crime, in the vehicle to be searched.
In the case at bar, it should be reiterated that the police
officers had already conducted a thorough investigation and verification
proceedings, which yielded, among others: (a) the identities of the robbery
suspects; (b) the place where they reside; and (c) the ownership of the getaway
vehicles used in the robbery, i.e., the motorcycle and the red Toyota Corolla.
As adverted to earlier, these pieces of information were already enough for
said police officers to secure the necessary warrants to accost the robbery
suspects. Consequently, there was no longer any exigent circumstance that would
have justified the necessity of setting up the checkpoint in this case for the
purpose of searching the subject vehicle. In addition, it is well to point out
that the checkpoint was arranged for the targeted arrest of Manago, who was
already identified as the culprit of the robbery incident. In this regard, it
cannot, therefore, be said that the checkpoint was meant to conduct a routinary
and indiscriminate search of moving vehicles. Rather, it was used as a
subterfuge to put into force the capture of the fleeing suspect. Unfortunately,
this setup cannot take the place of - nor skirt the legal requirement of -
procuring a valid search/arrest warrant given the circumstances of this case.
Hence, the search conducted on the red Toyota Corolla and on the person of its
driver, Manago, was unlawful.
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