The public will not see all the contents of Christian Ziegler's cellphone. That's because a circuit judge says police illegally searched the phone of the former head of Florida's Republican Party as they investigated allegations of rape and video voyeurism.
The ruling means that any records of Ziegler's telephone calls or texts will be expunged from the record and destroyed. Judge Hunter W. Carroll ruled that the confiscation of Ziegler's phone by police violated his Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure.
"Cellphones today can contain a person’s entire life story. Law enforcement agents euphemistically described the unlimited search and seizure of Mr. Ziegler’s cellphone data to be 'best practice,'" Carroll wrote in his opinion. "But 250 years ago, our forebears fought a Revolution against the tyrannical policies of King George III, including the allowance of general warrants that permitted unreasonable search and seizure.
"While today’s seizure is not from the entirety of one’s home — but 18 square inches of a cellphone and the content of electronic storage media— it is functionally the same," the judge ruled. "The Fourth Amendment prohibits general warrants like those advanced by law enforcement in this case."
The investigation began after a woman said Ziegler raped her at her apartment. Text messages released by Sarasota Police said Ziegler and his wife, Bridget, had already engaged in consensual sex with the woman.
Bridget Ziegler was never charged with a crime and remains on the Sarasota School Board, despite a resolution by the board in December, calling for her to resign. She co-founded the group Moms for Liberty, but the other co-founders have distanced themselves from her.
Christian Ziegler was removed as head of the state Republican Party in January after the allegations surfaced. He was never charged with a crime and his phone will be returned.
"Just because the Zieglers may be high profile figures in our community does not mean they have surrendered their constitutional rights."Judge Hunter W. Carroll
Records show law enforcement went through more than 250,000 photographs and 30,000 videos, with the judge saying they seized "an indeterminant amount, despite concluding they showed no evidence of a crime."
Police also seized more than 1,200 text messages between the Zieglers, most of which happened before the accusations were aired.
"Almost all of these communications had no connection to the crime being investigated," Judge Carroll wrote. "Law enforcement also seized other personal information about Mr. Ziegler with no apparent nexus to the crime investigated."
"Just because the Zieglers may be high profile figures in our community does not mean they have surrendered their constitutional rights," Carroll wrote. "If the contents of an unconstitutional search and seizure allowed by a warrant became a public record simply by virtue of the government’s possession of that material, the Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments’ protections would be functionally nullified. And the entire contents of every cellphone searched and seized based on a warrant issued by a state judge in Florida would also be a public record."
