SC: The second and subsequent seach conducted at Police Station is "unlawful and unreasonable."

 SC: The second and subsequent seach conducted at Police Station is "unlawful and unreasonable."

The purpose of allowing a warrantless search and seizure incident to a lawful arrest is to protect the arresting officer from being harmed by the person arrested, who might be armed with a concealed weapon, and to prevent the latter from destroying evidence within reach. 

It is therefore a reasonable exercise of the State's police power to protect: 

(a) law enforcers from the injury that may be inflicted on them by a person they have lawfully arrested;  and 

(b) evidence from being destroyed by the arrestee. It seeks to ensure the safety of the arresting officers and the integrity of the evidence under the control and within the reach of the arrestee. 

In People v. Calantiao,  the Court reiterated the rationale of a search incidental to a lawful arrest to wit: 

When an arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapon that the latter might use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer's safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee's person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. 

Moreover, in lawful arrests, it becomes both the duty and the right of the apprehending officers to conduct a warrantless search not only on the person of the suspect, but also in the permissible area within the latter's reach. Otherwise stated, a valid arrest allows the seizure of evidence or dangerous weapons either on the person of the one arrested or within the area of his immediate control. The phrase "within the area of his immediate control" means the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence. A gun on a table or in a drawer in front of one who is arrested can be as dangerous to the arresting officer as one concealed in the clothing of the person arrested[.]" 

On this note, case law requires a strict application of this rule, that is, "to absolutely limit a warrantless search of a person who is lawfully arrested to his or her person at the time of and incident to his or her arrest and to 'dangerous weapons or anything which may be used as proof of the commission of the offense.' Such warrantless search obviously cannot be made in a place other than the place of arrest."

Author's Note: 

• 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), Rule 113, it is required that at the time of the arrest, an offense had in fact just been committed and the arresting officer had personal knowledge of facts indicating that the accused had committed it. Verily, under Section 5 (b), Rule 113, 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 (Emphasis ours). 

• 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.

• In searches incidental to a lawful arrest, the law requires that there first be a lawful arrest before a search can be made - the process cannot be reversed. 

• The accused's failure to question the defect in his arrest, combined with his active participation during trial, constitutes his waiver of the defect in his arrest. 

• A waiver of an illegal, warrantless arrest does not carry with it a waiver of the inadmissibility of evidence seized during an illegal warrantless arrest. 

• Since the shabu was seized during an illegal arrest, its inadmissibility as evidence precludes conviction and justifies the acquittal of the petitioner. (VAPOROSO vs. People citing Sindac v. People) 

• in criminal cases, an appeal throws the entire case wide open for review and the reviewing tribunal can correct errors, though unassigned in the appealed judgment, or even reverse the trial court's decision based on grounds other than those that the parties raised as errors. The appeal confers the appellate court full jurisdiction over the case and renders such court competent to examine records, revise the judgment appealed from, increase the penalty, and cite the proper provision of the penal law

A judicial perusal of the records reveals that the arresting police officers conducted a total of two (2) searches on petitioners, namely: (a) the body search after the police officers apprehended them; and (b) a "more thorough" search conducted at the Panabo Police Station where the seized drugs were allegedly recovered from them. 

Applying the foregoing parameters to this case, the Court concludes that the first search made on petitioners, i.e., the cursory body search which, however, did not yield any drugs but only personal belongings of petitioners, may be considered as a search incidental to a lawful arrest as it was done contemporaneous to their arrest and at the place of apprehension. On the other hand, the same cannot be said of the second search which yielded the drugs subject of this case, considering that a substantial amount of time had already elapsed from the time of the arrest to the time of the second search, not to mention the fact that the second search was conducted at a venue other than the place of actual arrest, i.e., the Panabo Police Station. 

In sum, the subsequent and second search made on petitioners at the Panabo Police Station is unlawful and unreasonable. Resultantly, the illegal drugs allegedly recovered therefrom constitutes inadmissible evidence pursuant to the exclusionary clause enshrined in the 1987 Constitution. Given that said illegal drugs is the very corpus delicti of the crime charged, petitioners must necessarily be acquitted and exonerated from criminal liability. 

VAPOROSO vs. People [June 3, 2019 G.R. No. 238659]

👩‍⚖️ PERLAS-BERNABE, J 

Full text of the case:

🔗 https://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2019/jun2019/gr_238659_2019.html