Secretary of National Defense v Manalo, G.R. No. 180906 [Case Digest]

 

Secretary of National Defense v Manalo,

G.R. No. 180906

Facts:

            This case was originally a Petition for Prohibition, Injunction, and (TRO) filed before SC by herein respondents to stop herein petitioners and/or their officers and agents from depriving them of their right to liberty and other basic rights. Herein private respondents had been allegedly abducted and undergone tortured but scape from the military.

 

Issue:

            Whether or not private respondents can invoke the writ of Amparo when they were already free.

 

Held:

            YES. The petition for a writ of Amparo is a remedy available to any person whose right to life, liberty and security is violated or threatened with violation by an unlawful act or omission of a public official or employee, or of a private individual or entity.

A closer look at the right to security of person would yield various permutations of the exercise of this right:

§  First, the right to security of person is "freedom from fear."

§  Second, the right to security of person is a guarantee of bodily and psychological integrity or security.

§  Third, the right to security of person is a guarantee of protection of one's rights by the government.

 

Valdez v People, G.R. No. 170180 [Case Digest]

 

Valdez v People,

G.R. No. 170180

Facts:

            Bautista was conducting the routine patrol along the National Highway together with companions when they noticed petitioner, lugging a bag, alight from a mini-bus. The tanods observed that petitioner, who appeared suspicious to them, seemed to be looking for something. They thus approached him but the latter purportedly attempted to run away. They chased him, put him under arrest and thereafter brought him to the house of Barangay Captain where he, as averred by Bautista, was ordered by Mercado to open his bag. Petitioner’s bag allegedly contained a pair of denim pants, eighteen pieces of eggplant and dried marijuana leaves wrapped in newspaper and cellophane. RTC and CA find the accused guilty of the crime charged.

 

Issue:

            Whether or not the search which yielded the alleged contraband was lawful.

 

Held:

            NO. It is obvious that based on the testimonies of the arresting barangay tanod, not one of these [Rule 113, Sec. 5 of the Rules of Court] circumstances was obtaining at the time petitioner was arrested. By their own admission, petitioner was not committing an offense at the time he alighted from the bus, nor did he appear to be then committing an offense. The tanod did not have probable cause either to justify petitioner’s warrantless arrest.

 

 

Zulueta v CA, G.R. No. 107383 [Case Digest]

 

Zulueta v CA,

G.R. No. 107383

Facts:

            Petitioner Cecilia Zulueta is the wife of private respondent Alfredo Martin. Petitioner entered the clinic of her husband, and in the presence of her mother, a driver and private respondent's secretary, forcibly opened the drawers and cabinet in her husband's clinic and took 157 documents consisting of private correspondence between Dr. Martin and his alleged paramours.

            Dr. Martin brought this action below for recovery of the documents and papers and for damages against petitioner. RTC rendered judgment in favor of Dr. Martin. CA affirmed the decision of RTC. Said documents were used against Dr. Martin in the administrative case.

 

Issue:

            Whether or not the documents admissible as evidence in administrative case.

Held:

            NO. The constitutional injunction declaring "the privacy of communication and correspondence [to be] inviolable" is no less applicable simply because it is the wife (who thinks herself aggrieved by her husband's infidelity) who is the party against whom the constitutional provision is to be enforced.

The intimacies between husband and wife do not justify any one of them in breaking the drawers and cabinets of the other and in ransacking them for any telltale evidence of marital infidelity. A person, by contracting marriage, does not shed his/her integrity or his right to privacy as an individual and the constitutional protection is ever available to him or to her.