Messy

There is such a thing as execution risk. The best laid plans could flounder when the execution is messy.

Twice this past week, we saw this sort of risk play out for our law enforcers.

In Davao, the PNP massed over a hundred law enforcers to serve a warrant on controversial pastor Apollo Quiboloy. After shoving through the pastor’s wall of followers to get inside Quiboloy’s compound, the police ended the day empty-handed. The pastor was nowhere to be found.

The police raid on a POGO compound in Porac, Pampanga turned out to be a bigger fiasco.

On June 4, the combined forces of the Philippine National Police, the Special Action Force and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) raided the facilities of a company called Lucky South 99 Outsourcing Corporation. The raid on the sprawling complex did yield some interesting things, such a torture devices and Chinese People’s Liberation Army uniforms.

It turns out, however, that whatever was found there might not be useful as evidence in any court case stemming from this.

The search warrant for this raid was issued by Judge Maria Belinda Rama of the Malolos Regional Trial Court. The same warrant was later withdrawn by the same court and the same judge for being infected with irregularities, such as failure to state the specifics of the search. That makes the raid illegal.

The judge was within her rights to withdraw the warrant she signed. But the problem here is that the raid, covered by the first warrant, was well underway. The facility was sealed by the raiders. No one has been allowed ingress or egress since June 4. Foreign nationals arrested during the raid were already in police custody.

The law is clear on this. Any item seized in the course of an illegal search is inadmissible as evidence for any court proceeding or whatever other purpose. Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution guarantees every citizen the right to personal liberty and security of homes against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Realizing a fiasco unfolding, the PAOCC sought another search warrant to cover the raid. A new search warrant was issued by a court in San Fernando, Pampanga on June 7. But by this time, the raided