NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Prosecutors may use evidence obtained from fugitive real estate heir Robert Durst's hotel room and during his questioning, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The ruling allows federal prosecutors to continue with a weapons charge that is keeping Durst in Louisiana even though he faces a murder charge in Los Angeles.
Durst's lawyers contended that the warrant to search his room at the J.W. Marriott was invalid because it was based on a previous warrantless search by FBI agents.
Judge Helen Berrigan ruled Tuesday that the judge who signed the warrant had other reasons to find probable cause for a search. She noted that the sworn statement supporting the search warrant was almost identical to one supporting an arrest warrant sworn out three days earlier.
Durst's attorneys did not immediately answer an email requesting comment.
Durst, an estranged member of the family that runs 1 World Trade Center in New York, faces a murder trial in California in the death of his friend and onetime spokeswoman Susan Berman. He has waived extradition there.
But he's stuck in a Louisiana lockup awaiting trial Jan. 11 on a federal charge that he illegally possessed a .38-caliber revolver after being convicted of a felony.
The gun was found last March when Durst was detained at the hotel on the eve of the finale of a six-part HBO documentary about him, the disappearance of his first wife in 1982, Berman's death and the death and dismemberment of a neighbor in Galveston in 2001.
In addition, Berrigan wrote, "Law enforcement was on notice that Durst was about to repeat his previous behavior of attempting to flee a prosecution by leaving the country, and 'going off the radar.'"
She said evidence found in the first search may have been tainted, "since warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable. However, the second seizure of the evidence during the legal search pursuant to a search warrant removes any taint from the original seizure," Berrigan wrote.
She rejected the prosecutors' argument that registering as "Everette Ward" cost Durst his right to privacy in the hotel.
"This Court is not about to disrupt the long standing Fourth Amendment protection afforded hotel rooms as temporary homes by declaring that the use of an alias negates any privacy interest in that room," she wrote. "To do so would call into question the privacy expected from numerous dignitaries, politicians and celebrities who rely on using an alias to register for hotel rooms in order to maintain their security and privacy."
She also rejected Durst's claims that the arrest warrant was invalid.
"The government contends that Durst's attack on the arrest warrant is an attempt to begin litigating the California murder charge and receive discovery he is not yet entitled and this Court has to agree," Berrigan wrote.
– by AP Reporter Janet McConnaughey
