Zeigler v. Florida, 81-5908
Decision Date | 22 March 1982 |
Docket Number | No. 81-5908,81-5908 |
Parties | William Thomas ZEIGLER, Jr., v. FLORIDA |
Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
On petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of Florida.
The motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for writ of certiorari is denied.
Adhering to my view that the death penalty is in all circumstances cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 227, 231, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 2971, 2973, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), I would grant certiorari and vacate the death sentence in this case.
Petitioner seeks review of the State Supreme Court's decision upholding his murder conviction and death sentence. He argues that his conviction and death sentence should be set aside because they were based in part on evidence obtained in flagrant violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. He objects to the State Supreme Court's holding that, by calling the Chief of Police for assistance, he consented to a broad-ranging 12 day search of his furniture store. Because I believe that this petition raises serious Fourth Amendment claims 1 and offers an opportunity for this Court to clarify the standards for consent to search under Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973), I dissent from the denial of certiorari.2
On December 24, 1975, four persons were killed at a furniture store owned by petitioner. Petitioner's wife, her parents, and another person had been shot to death, and petitioner had been shot in the abdomen and was seriously wounded. That night, shortly after the shootings, petitioner called the local police chief, a personal friend of petitioner's, and requested immediate assistance. The police chief testified: In response to this call, police entered the store, found petitioner, who was bleeding badly, and rushed him to the hospital. The police found four bodies, searched for the killer, and secured the building.
Later that night, a local detective arrived to direct the investigation. The store was searched again that night and repeatedly over the next twelve days. No effort was made to ob- tain a warrant until January 6, 1976. On December 26, police made a warrantless entry into petitioner's office, which was separated from the area where the victims were found, breaking two locks in the process. They went through petitioner's personal papers, checkbooks, and corporate records, and seized several documents. In searching through one of petitioner's desks, police found an insurance policy that petitioner had taken out on his wife's life. A second policy was seized in a search the next day. The two policies were introduced at trial to support the State's theory that petitioner had a pecuniary motive for killing his wife. On January 2, police searched the store yet again. They entered a backroom separated from the area in which the victims had been found, searched the inside of a closed storage cabinet, and seized a large amount of damaging evidence that was introduced at trial.
The detective testified that in conducting these warrantless searches, he relied on a so-called crime scene exception to the warrant requirement. He specifically stated that he did not have petitioner's consent to all of the searches. The trial court upheld the searches under this crime scene rationale. Although the State Supreme Court recognized that a crime scene exception is inconsistent with Mincey v. Arizona, 437...
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