PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE, VS.
BILLY ACOSTA, ACCUSED-APPELLANT.
RULE 128 SECTION 3
September 10, 2015, Alfredo Salucana went to the police station to report a mauling
incident where Billy Acosta purportedly hit him with a wood, Salucana also reported that Acosta
was planting Marijuana in his house. This prompted the police officers to proceed to Acosta’s
house where after Salucana’s positive identification of Acosta, the latter was immediately
arrested. After such arrest, SPO4 Legaspi found 13 hills of marijuana, which they uprooted,
marked and inventoried.
Acosta denied the charges and argued that the seized marijuana plants are inadmissible
in evidence as the "plain view" doctrine is not applicable.
RTC found Acosta guilty which was affirmed by the CA.
The Supreme Court found Acosta not guilty.
Section 3 Article III of the 1987 Constitution provides as a general rule that evidence
obtained from unreasonable searches and seizures shall be inadmissible in evidence for any
purpose in any proceeding. One of the exceptions is when "plain view" doctrine is applicable.
This applies when the following requisites concur: (a) the law enforcement officer has a prior
justification for an intrusion; (b) the discovery of evidence in plain view is inadvertent; (c) it is
immediately apparent that the item he observes may be evidence of a crime, contraband or
otherwise subject to seizure.
Verily, it could not be gainsaid that the discovery was inadvertent when the police officers
already knew that there could be marijuana plants in the area. Thus, the second requisite is
absent. Considering that the "plain view" doctrine is inapplicable, the seized marijuana are
inadmissible in evidence against Acosta for being fruits of the poisonous tree.
Section 3 of Rule 128 provides that an evidence is admissible when it is relevant to the
issue and is not excluded by the law of these rules. In this case the evidence against Acosta
was obtained in violation of his rights against reasonable searches and seizures, and given that
the confiscated plants are the very corpus delicti of the crime charged, the Court finds Acosta's
conviction to be improper and therefore, Billy Acosta is Acquitted.
