G.R. No. 107383
February 20, 1996
Facts
- A petition for a review on certiorari on the assailed decision of the CA.
- Petitioner and respondent were spouses. Petitioner 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, greeting cards, cancelled checks, diaries, Dr. Martin’s passport, and photographs. The documents and papers were seized for use in evidence in a case for legal separation and for disqualification from the practice of medicine which petitioner had filed against her husband.
- Respondent brought this action for recovery of the documents and papers and for damages.
Issue
Whether or not there is a violation of the privacy of communication and correspondence which makes the evidence inadmissible?
Held
Yes. Section 3, Article 3 of the 1987 Constitution provides that the privacy of communication and correspondence is inviolable except if there is a lawful order from the Court or when public safety or order requires otherwise as prescribed by law. Any violation of this provision renders the evidence obtained inadmissible “for any purpose in any proceeding.
In this case, 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.
The law insures absolute freedom of communication between the spouses by making it privileged. Neither husband nor wife may testify for or against the other without the consent of the affected spouse while the marriage subsists. Neither may be examined without the consent of the other as to any communication received in confidence by one from the other during the marriage, save for specified exceptions. But one thing is freedom of communication; quite another is a compulsion for each one to share what one knows with the other. And this has nothing to do with the duty of fidelity that each owes to the other.