RIZAL ALIH, NASIM ALIH, AISAN ALIH, MIJAL ALIH, OMAR ALIH, EDRIS MUKSAN, MULSIDI WARADIL, BILLY ASMAD, RAMSID ASALI, BANDING USMAN, ANGGANG HADANI, WARMIKHAN HAPA, GABRAL JIKIRI…

On November 25, 1984, a contingent of more than two hundred
Philippine marines and elements of the home defense forces raided the compound
occupied by the petitioners at Gov.
Alvarez street, Zamboanga City, in search of loose firearms, ammunition and
other explosives.^[1]

The military operation was commonly known and dreaded as a
“zona,” which was not unlike the feared practice of the kempeitai during the Japanese Occupation of rounding up the people in a
locality, arresting the persons fingered by a hooded informer, and executing
them outright (although the last part is not included in the modern
refinement).

The initial reaction of the people inside the compound was to
resist the invasion with a burst of gunfire. No one was hurt as presumably the purpose was merely to warn the in­truders
and deter them from entering. Unfortunately, as might be expected in incidents like this, the
situation aggravated soon enough. The
soldiers returned fire and a bloody shoot-out ensued, resulting in a number of
casual­ties.^[2]

The besieged compound surrendered the following morning, and
sixteen male occupants were arrested, later to be finger­printed,
paraffin-tested and photographed over their objec­tion. The military also inventoried and
confiscated nine M16 rifles, one M14 rifle, nine rifle grenades, and several
rounds of ammunition found in the premises.^[3]

On December 21, 1984, the petitioners came to this Court in a
petition for prohibition and mandamus with preliminary injunction
and restraining order. Their purpose
was to recover the articles seized from
them, to prevent these from being used as evidence against them, and to challenge
their fin­gerprinting, photographing and paraffin-testing as viola­tive of
their right against self-incrimination.^[4]

The Court, treating the petition as an injunction suit with a prayer for the return of the
articles alleged to have been illegally seized, referred it for hearing to
Judge Omar U. Amin of the
regional trial court, Zamboanga City.^[5]
After receiving the testimonial and documentary evidence of the parties, he
submitted the report and recommendations on which this opinion is based.^[6]

The petitioners demand the return of the arms and ammu­nition on
the ground that they were taken without a search warrant as required by the
Bill of Rights. This is confirmed by
the said report and in fact admitted by the respondents, “but with
avoidance.”^[7]

Article IV, Section 3, of
the 1973 Constitution, which was in force at the time of the incident in
question, pro­vided as follows:

“Sec. 3. The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures
of whatever nature and for any purpose
shall not be violated, and no search war­rant or warrant of arrest shall issue
except upon probable cause to be determined by the judge, or such other
responsible officer as may be authorized by law, after examination under oath
or affirmation of the complainant and the witnes­ses he may
produce, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons
or things to be seized.”

It was also declared in Article IV, Section 4(2) that-

“Sec. 4(2) Any
evidence obtained in violation of this or the preceding section shall be
inadmissible for any purpose in any proceeding.”

The respondents, while admitting the absence of the required
search warrant, sought to justify their act on the ground that they were acting
under superior orders.^[8]
There was also the suggestion that the measure was necessary because of the aggravation
of the peace and order problem generated by the assassination of Mayor Cesar Climaco.^[9]

“Superior
orders” cannot, of course, countermand the Constitution. The fact that the petitioners
were suspected of the Climaco killing did not excuse the
constitutional short-cuts the respondents took. As eloquently affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ex parte Milligan:^[10]

“The Constitution is a
law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with
the shield of its protec­tion all classes of men, at all times and under all
circumstances. No doctrine, in­volving
more pernicious consequences, was ever
invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended
during any of the great exigencies of govern­ment.”

The precarious state of lawlessness in Zamboanga City at the time
in question certainly did not excuse the non­-observance of the constitutional
guaranty against unrea­sonable searches and seizures. There was no state of hos­tilities in the area to justify,
assuming it could, the repressions committed therein against the petitioners.

It is so easy to say that
the petitioners were out­laws and deserved the arbitrary treatment they
received to take them into custody; but that is a cynical argument. It is also fallacious. Its obvious flaw lies in the con­clusion
that the petitioners were unquestionably guilty on the strength alone of
unsubstantiated reports that they were stockpiling weapons.

The record does not disclose that the petitioners were wanted
criminals or fugitives from justice. At
the time of the “zona,” they were merely suspected of the mayor’s slaying and had not in fact even been
investigated for it. As mere suspects,
they were presumed innocent and not guilty as summarily pronounced by the
military.

Indeed, even if were assumed for the sake of argument that they
were guilty, they would not have been any less entitled to the protection of
the Constitution, which covers both the innocent and the guilty. This is not to say, of course, that the
Constitution coddles criminals. What it
does simply signify is that, lacking
the shield of innocence, the guilty need the armor of the Constitution, to
protect them, not from a deserved sentence, but from arbitrary punish­ment. Every person is entitled to due
process. It is no exaggeration that the
basest criminal, ranged against the rest
of the people who would condemn him outright, is still, under the Bill of Rights,
a majority of one.

If the respondents did not actually disdain the Cons­titution
when they made their illegal raid, they
certainly gave every appearance of doing so. This is truly
regrettable for it was incumbent on them, especially during those tense and tindery times, to encourage rather than
undermine respect for the law, which it
was their duty to uphold.

In acting as they did, they also defied the precept that
“civilian authority is at
all times supreme over the
military” so clearly proclaimed in the 1973 Constitution.^[11]
In the instant case, the respondents simply by-passed the civil courts, which had the authority
to determine whether or not there was probable cause to search the petitioner’s premises. Instead, they proceeded to make the raid
without a search warrant on their
own unauthorized determination of the petitioner’s guilt.

The respondents cannot
even plead the urgency of the raid
because it was in fact not urgent. They
knew where the petitioners were. They
had every opportunity to get a search warrant
before making the raid. If they were
worried that the weapons inside the compound would be spirited away, they could
have surrounded the premises in the meantime, as a preventive measure. There was absolutely no reason at all why
they should disregard the
orderly processes required by the Constitution and instead insist on arbi­trarily forcing their way into
the petitioner’s premises with
all the menace of a military invasion.

Conceding that the search was truly warrantless,
might not the search and seizure be nonetheless considered valid because it was incidental to a legal arrest? Surely not. If all the law-enforcement authorities have to do is force their way into any house and
then pick up anything they see there on the ground that the occupants are
resisting arrest, then we might
as well delete the Bill of Rights
as a fussy redundancy.

When the respondents could have easily obtained a search warrant
from any of the TEN civil courts then open
and functioning in Zamboanga City,^[12]
they instead simply barged into the
beleaguered premises on the
verbal order of their superior
officers. One cannot just force his way
into any man’s house on the illegal
orders of a superior, how­ever lofty his rank. Indeed,
even the humblest hovel is pro­tected from official intrusion because of the
ancient rule, revered in all
free regimes, that a man’s house is his castle.

“It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may enter; the rain may
enter. But the King of England may not enter. All the forces of the Crown dare not cross
the threshold of the ruined tenement.”^[13]

If the arrest was made under Rule 113, Section 5, of the Rules of
Court in connection with a crime about
to be committed, being committed,
or just committed, what was that
crime? There is no allegation in the
record of such a justification. Parenthetically, it may be observed that under the revised Rule 113,
Section 5(b), the officer making the arrest must have personal knowledge of the ground
there­for as stressed in the recent case of People v. Burgos.^[14]

If follows that as the search of the petitioners’ premises was
violative of the Constitution, all the fire­arms and ammunition taken from the
raided compound are in­admissible in evidence in any of the proceedings against
the petitioners. These articles are
“fruits of the poison­ous tree.”^[15]
As Judge Learned Hand observed, “Only in case the prosecution which itself
controls the seizing of­ficials, knows that it cannot profit
by their wrong, will the wrong be repressed.”^[16]
Pending determination of the legality of such articles, however, they shall
remain in custodia legis, subject to such
appropriate disposition as the corresponding courts may decide.^[17]

The objection to the photographing, fingerprinting and
paraffin-testing of the petitioners deserves slight comment. The prohibition against self-incrimination
applies to testimonial compulsion only. As Justice Holmes put it in Holt v. United States,^[18]
“The prohibition of compel­ling a man in a criminal court to be a witness
against himself is a prohibition of the
use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, not an
exclu­sion of his body as evidence when it may be material.”

The fearful days of hamleting, salvaging, “zona” and
other dreaded operations should remain in the past, banished with the secret
marshals and their covert license to kill without trial. We must be done with lawlessness in the name
of law enforcement. Those who are
supposed to uphold the law must not be the first to violate it. As Chief Justice Claudio Teehankee stressed
in his concurring opinion in Lacanilao v. De Leon,^[19]
“It is time that the
martial law regime’s legacy of the law of force be discarded and that there be
a return to the force and rule of law.”

All of us must exert efforts to make our country truly free and democratic, where every individual
is en­titled to the full protection of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
can stand as a stolid sentinel for all, the innocent as well as the guilty,
including the basest of criminals.

WHEREFORE, the search of the petitioners’ premises on
November 25, 1984, is hereby declared ILLEGAL and all the articles seized as a
result thereof are inadmissible in evidence
against the petitioners in any proceedings. However, the said articles shall remain in custodia legis
pending the outcome of the criminal cases that have been or may later be filed
against the petitioners.

SO ORDERED.

Teehankee, C.J., Yap, Fernan, Narvasa, Melencio-Herrera, Gutierrez,
Jr., Paras, Feliciano, Gancayco, Padilla, Bidin, Sarmiento, and Cortes, JJ., concur.

^[1]
Rollo, p. 81.

^[2]
Ibid., pp. 81-81

^[3]
Id., p. 82.

^[4]
id., pp. 3-16.

^[5]
id., p. 43.

^[6]
id., pp. 76-84.

^[7]
id., p. 83.

^[8]
id.

^[9]
id.

^[10]
4 Wall. 2.

^[11]
Art. II, Sec. 8, 1973 Constitution.

^[12]
Annexes “E”, “E-1”,
“E-2”, “E-3”, “E-4”, “E-5”,
“E-6”, “E7”, “E-8”, and “E-9”.

^[13]
U.S. v. Arceo, 3 Phil. 381.

^[14]
144 SCRA 1.

^[15]
Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. U.S.,
251 U.S. 385.

^[16]
Pugliese (1945) 133 F. 2ed. 497.

^[17]
Roan v. ponzales, 145 SCRA 687.

^[18]
218 U.S. 245.

^[19]
G.R. No. 76532, prom. Jan. 26, 1987