People have the right to be secured in their homes. They can prevent any person, even law enforcers, from entering their houses. The exception is when there is a search warrant.
To check the police powers of the government, our Constitution [Section 2, Article III – Bill of Rights] mandates that search and seizure may be made through a judicial warrant. Without it, such search and seizure becomes unreasonable.
To protect the people from unreasonable searches and seizures, our Constitution [Section 3 [2], Article III] provides that evidence obtained from unreasonable searches and seizures shall be inadmissible in evidence for any purpose in any proceeding. In other words, any evidence obtained and confiscated on the occasion of such unreasonable search and seizure is tainted and should be excluded for being the proverbial “fruit of a poisonous tree.”
However, there are cases when a warrantless search is valid, namely: [1] if search is incidental to a lawful arrest; [2] during search of evidence in plain view; [3] in search of a moving vehicle; [4] consented warrantless search; [5] customs search; [6] stop and frisk; and [7] exigent and emergency circumstances.
People have the right to be secured in their person. Thus, he cannot be arrested without a warrant of arrest. However, the law [Section 5, Rule 113 of the Revised Rules on Criminal Procedure], allows a police officer or private person to arrest a person without a warrant in three [3] instances: [1] when in his presence, the person to be arrested has committed, is actually committing, or is attempting to commit an offense. This is also known as an in flagrante delicto [or in the very act of wrongdoing] arrest; [2] when a crime has just been committed and he has reason to believe based on personal knowledge of facts or circumstances that the person to be arrested has committed it. This is also known as a hot pursuit arrest and [3] when the person to be arrested is a prisoner who has escaped from jail.
On August 10, 2022, our Supreme Court in People v. Jumarang, G.R. 250306 ruled on the validity of the arrest and admissibility of evidence taken by the police inside the house without search warrant.
In this case, witnesses testified that when the police got a tip about marijuana plants inside a residential house, they went and saw a man tending some plants at the rooftop. The man holding a three-foot tall potted plant with five-finger leaves started descending the roof. He was told to go outside and was arrested.
With his consent, the police went to the rooftop and found two more pots of marijuana. Jumarang denied the charge. The trial court found him guilty of cultivation of dangerous drugs and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He appealed, but the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision.
At the Supreme Court, the accused argued that his warrantless arrest and search of his house is illegal while the government argued that the search incidental to a valid warrantless arrest is legal and a valid consented search.
The Supreme Court ruled that in making warrantless arrest, the person to be arrested must either be doing or attempting or have done a crime in the presence or within the view of the arresting officer. In a search as an incident to a lawful arrest, the arrest must precede the search and this process cannot be reversed.
The police arrested the person based on a tip from a confidential informant. He was simply going downstairs while holding a potted plant when arrested. At that moment, he was not committing a crime and it was not even shown that he was about to do so or that he had just done so.
What he was doing was descending from the stairs and there was no untoward indication that called for his arrest. Neither can this Court consider the search conducted on the rooftop where they discovered two more pots of marijuana plant as a valid consented search. The warrantless arrest was illegal.
As such, the search on the house was also illegal. Consent to a warrantless search and seizure must be clear, specific, intelligently given and without duress or coercion.
Mere passive conformity to the warrantless search is not a consent to a warrantless search. Since the marijuana plants are not admissible as evidence and cannot be used against accused for being a fruit of the poisonous tree, the Supreme Court reversed the CA and RTC decision and acquitted Jumarang.
