SARASOTA — A Sarasota judge has ruled the Sarasota Police Department violated Christian Ziegler’s rights by searching his cellphone while investigating him for sexual assault.
In a decision released Monday, Circuit Judge Hunter Carroll ruled that Ziegler’s cellphone search last year was “severely overbroad” and violated three of the Republican politician’s Constitutional rights.
According to the court decision, the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments — which protect citizens from unreasonable search and seizure, prohibiting any person of property without due process of law, and equal protection of the law — were all “nullified” by SPD’s investigation.
Sarasota Police took up an investigation into Ziegler last year after a woman filed a complaint with police, saying she Ziegler assaulted her.
Ziegler, a former Sarasota County commissioner, was chair of the Republican Party of Florida at the time. He lives in Sarasota with this wife, Bridget Ziegler, who is a member of the Sarasota County School Board and a founder of the Sarasota County Chapter of Moms for Liberty.
Christian Ziegler was forced out of his chairmanship after the allegations become public.
Following the investigation, the state attorney’s office opted not to file charges against Christian Ziegler.
According to court documents, SPD “rifled” through more than 250,000 photographs and 30,000 videos on Christian Ziegler’s cellphone, Google Drive and Instagram accounts through three search warrants “without evidence of a crime.”
Carroll ruled these warrants were “severely overbroad,” stating law enforcement’s handling of the investigation were “patently unreasonable” and violated Mr. Ziegler’s constitutional rights.
SPD also seized more than 1,200 text communications between the Zieglers, messages Carroll said occurred two years before the alleged criminal incident arose last October.
Carroll said the police department’s investigation process was tantamount to the “tyrannical policies of King George III,” comparing the Zieglers’ struggles to those who fought for their rights in the American Revolution.
“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,” Carroll said.
Carroll said that while the Zieglers are well-known to the public, their right to privacy must “apply to all,” stating that the contents found by a warrant becoming public record simply by being in possession of the government would open the door for all evidence found in search and seizures to become public record.
Carroll acknowledged Christian Ziegler’s request to regain exclusive possession and control of his data was constitutional, stating he reserved the right since the searched data was “outside of the official business” of SPD’s investigation.
Carroll ordered any copies of the data to be destroyed as well.
Among the data to be returned to Ziegler include what is noted as “The Video” of the sexual encounter between Christian Ziegler and his accuser, which Ziegler voluntarily provided to SPD.
The Sarasota judge reminded the public in his concluding statement that their “intense interest” does not warrant the right to a public show of the Zieglers’ data, despite the severity of the allegations against them.
Carroll offered up the example of doing the same to another high-profile figure in the community.
“Instead of Mr. Ziegler, what if the cellphone belonged to the Executive Editor of a well-known media outlet and it contained the confidential identity of sources that had nothing to do with the crime being investigated?” Carroll said. “Should a search of the phone’s contents via an overbroad warrant then convert the confidential identity of sources to a ‘public record’?”
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