Ousted Republican Party of Florida Chair Christian Ziegler acknowledged in court that he kept numerous videos of sexual partners besides his wife.
Sarasota Police have copies of much of that, and some 30,000 videos downloaded from Ziegler's iPhone last year. Authorities obtained the entire contents after serving a search warrant connected to a since-closed investigation whether Ziegler raped a woman or filmed a sexual encounter without permission.
Ziegler was never arrested, with police ultimately concluding that sex with a Sarasota woman leveling the accusation was "likely consensual" and prosecutors ultimately determining they lacked evidence to pursue a video voyeurism charge.
Ziegler testified on the topic in a May 16 hearing in Sarasota as he and wife Bridget, a Sarasota County School Board member, try to stop the further release of embarrassing information.
But just fighting the publishing of video has already put Ziegler in the position of discussing the case in open court. Morgan Bentley, a lawyer fighting for the release of further information from the phone, questioned Christian Ziegler about what may still be out of view.
"Are there other videos or photographs on your phone that depict other sexual activity with other people other than Mrs. Ziegler?" Bentley asked Christian Ziegler.
"I believe so," he replied.
He also said any people depicted in those videos were "willing participants" both in the sexual acts and with being filmed.
While attorneys for Ziegler objected to the line of questioning, Bentley argued the matter was at the heart of the case, and that the Zieglers effectively conceded the existence of further embarrassing materials just in bringing forward a lawsuit against police.
The Zieglers sued the Sarasota Police and State Attorney's Office over the release of evidence. At one point, Christian Ziegler claimed Marsy's Law should protect his identify being released because he was the victim of a false rape accusation. But police and prosecutors both say that does not apply, and have never attributed false motives to the woman who alleged the crimes.
In the case, Ziegler said he volunteered to provide a 1-minute-44-second video of him and the accuser engaged in a sexual encounter last October, the one that prompted her reporting the matter to police. But police still pursued the full contents of Ziegler's phone because they needed data beyond what had been offered.
That video, which showed the short sexual encounter, included her asking Ziegler when he was going to climax, and led to police determining the encounter was not forced.
Det. Angela Cox said police continued to investigate, though, whether Ziegler had reason to believe she was not competent at that time to offer consent. Communications indicated that the two scheduled a threesome with the Zieglers, but that the woman asked Christian not to show up when she learned Bridget would not be there.
The details of the investigation already made public have revealed that the Zieglers and the woman had a past threesome, something Bridget Ziegler admitted to police.
Michael Barfield, with the Florida Center for Government Accountability, questioned both Ziegler and Cox on the stand, and continuously pressed for details on the investigation and case. He alluded at one point to a text sent by Bridget Ziegler to a friend in London the day the encounter between Ziegler and the woman took place, though a Judge ultimately shot down the details of this being aired in open court.
Of note, the Center during the hearing published a report on its media site, the Florida Trident, which included parts of a report by Cox not yet publicly released. That detailed conversations between Bridget and Christian about him hunting for women in local bars to bring home, with one text from Bridget telling her husband, "Don't come home until your dick is wet."
Notably, legal authorities and public records advocates agreed in court that the entire contents of Christian Ziegler's phone need not be publicly released. Attorneys for the police and prosecutors even said they do not believe the release of all that data would serve a public service, and could have far-reaching legal consequences beyond the case.
Judge Hunter Carroll repeatedly suggested that the ramifications of this high-profile case could set precedent that affects other proceedings.
Sarasota Police said Christian Ziegler's phone, which has a terabyte of available storage space, was the largest data download from a device ever conducted by the agency. It included some 30,000 videos and 250,000 photographs, most of that irrelevant to the case.
No comments:
Post a Comment