Sheriff's Department Violated Fourth Amendment by Illegal Surveillance, Two Offending Officers Never Punished

Sheriff DAVID SHOAR never punished Detective Thomas Marmo and Sgt. Brian Canova for videotaping and watching attorney-client meetings. They did so pursuant to orders from SHOAR, the internationally known obstructor of justice in the Michelle O'Connell case. SHOAR is the mentally unbalanced St. Johns County political boss, Republican Lord of All He Surveys, a legend in his own mind.




Posted April 9, 2014 09:11 am - Updated April 10, 2014 12:11 am
By ANDREW PANTAZI andrew.pantazi@jacksonville.com
St. Johns deputies violated suspect's rights with secret recording

Two St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office deputies violated a constitutional right and the federal wiretapping law, a federal court ruled, when the two secretly recorded conversations between a suspect and his attorney and forcibly took a written statement from the suspect.

Detective Thomas Marmo and Sgt. Brian Canova were investigating Joel Studivant for a potential violation against a domestic violence injunction. Marmo was interviewing Studivant with his attorney, Anne Marie Gennusa.

Studivant and Gennusa did not know they were being recorded, and Studivant began preparing a written statement. Marmo then left the room to talk to Canova. Studivant and his lawyer talked and decided not to give the statement.

Canova and Marmo watched through a hidden camera.

Marmo came back into the interview room and forcibly grabbed the written statement from the lawyer and arrested Studivant.

The criminal charges were eventually dismissed after a deferred prosecution agreement.

It doesn’t matter, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, that Gennusa wasn’t harmed. It matters that Marmo took something that didn’t belong to him.

If Marmo believed evidence was about to be destroyed, he could argue that he could’ve taken the evidence without a warrant.

But the deputies had no reason to believe they couldn’t have obtained the evidence with a warrant.

The court also ruled the two violated Studivant’s and Gennusa’s rights by secretly recording the two.

Studivant had no reason to expect he was being recorded, the court ruled, because he wasn’t under arrest, especially because he was having a privileged conversation with his attorney.

“The government has no weighty law-enforcement, security, or penological interest in recording, without a warrant, the attorney-client conversations of a person who has not been arrested, even if those conversations take place in an interview room at a sheriff’s office,” the court ordered.

St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Chuck Mulligan said he couldn’t comment because the court’s ruling can still be appealed.

Edward Adelbert Slavin · 

Bete noir at Community Activist

Apparently, no punishment was ever meted out to the the two officers --whom four judges in two courts held illegally listened in on attorney-client conversations, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar habitually violates constitutional rights. The St. Augustine Record must investigate his misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance.

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For more on SHOAR and his record of violating citizens' constitutional rights, please  consult the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the Gennusa v. Canova case:  http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/201213871.pdf , and the 14,000 word New York Times investigation and the PBS Frontline and NBC Dateline investigations at:

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/two-gunshots/ "Two Gunshots on a Summer Night," by Walt Bogdanich and Glenn Silber
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-in-st-augustine/  PBS Frontline documentary, "A Death in St. Augustine" and 2016 followup:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/us/michelle-oconnell-jeremy-banks.html