Wys v. Fornaris
Wys v. Fornaris
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court.
Eduardo Wys, the appellant, was charged with, a criminal offense consisting in having solicited contributions from school teachers for political purposes in violation of the Civil Service Law. On the day that the complaint was filed in the municipal court a detective sergeant named Ramón Gruanil asked for a search warrant to search the office of the local committee of the Unionist party and, obtaining the same, proceeded to seize various promissory notes, papers, books and other articles in possession of the said committee.
For the sake of argument, but only for that purpose, it may be granted at the outset that the petition for a search warrant was defective, if not entirely illegal and arbitrary inasmuch as, among other things, it did not allege in whose possession the desired objects were, nor that they could not be readily obtained otherwise by motion to produce, or what not, nor were the objects wanted described. The appellant also complains that the said petition for a search warrant did not contain a statement that he, the appellant, was the secretary or had any connection with the sMd committee. The object of the application for a certiorari made to the District Court of Ponce was that the proceedings obtained under the search warrant be annulled.
The real question to be decided by us is the fight of appellant to ask for this writ of certiorari ppnGeding that
The petition does not clearly set ont that the search warrant issued ont of the criminal proceeding wherein a complaint was filed against the petitioner, bnt as he askecl that the papers in that criminal snit, and no others, he certified to the district court, it may be assumed that the proceeding for a search warrant was initiated within the said prosecution. There is nothing in the law concerning search warrants that requires it to be issued in a particular proceeding. It is a separate proceeding.
Technically, perháps, it might be insisted that the search warrant issued out of the criminal action in which the appellant was. the party defendant and that, as a party, he would have the right to attack the validity of anything done therein. Even then, he would have no more right or interest to attack the issuance of a search warrant than a defendant would have a right to attack a subpoena duces tecum wherein the witness summoned did not object. And a similar question would be presented where one nominally a party would seek to revise by certiorari a judgment which in no way affected him. Even in a direct appeal it is only the aggrieved party 'who may exercise the right. Section 294, Code of Civil Procedure.
The appellant having shown no right or interest in the property seized, the court for that reason alone, and there may be others, was justified in refusing the writ.
The order appealed from must stand
Affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.