Frank Zito says he shot police because they broke his door{ unreasonable search and seizure }

SALISBURY - "If they didn't break into my door, I wouldn't have shot them," Frank Zito blurted out Wednesday at a hearing to suppress evidence in Zito's murder trial.

Attorneys for both sides argued in Wicomico County Circuit Court whether several pieces of evidence, including several alleged admissions by Zito, should be allowed in the jury trial. Circuit Judge Donald C. Davis said he should issue a ruling on the motion to suppress evidence sometime today.

Zito, 41, of Centreville, faces the death penalty on two first-degree murder charges and several other felony and misdemeanor charges.

Police allege that he shot and killed Centreville Patrolman Michael S. Nickerson and Dfc. Jason Schwenz, of the Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Office. The two officers went to investigate a noise complaint in February of 2001 when police say Zito shot both officers with a shotgun.

Zito has pleaded not guilty and not criminally responsible to the charges against him.

Judge Davis heard testimony from several police officers and Wicomico County Detention Center employees as to what happened Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, 2001.

Maryland State Police Trooper Corey Skidmore was the first officer to testify and the only witness to the shooting. Skidmore said he arrived to back up Nickerson and Schwenz who were trying to get Zito to come out of his house.

After being threatened, the officers got a key to Zito's trailer from his mother, Betty Zito, who was also Zito's landlady, Skidmore said. He said Zito's mother told the officers to get Zito out "by any means necessary."

After the three officers broke through a storm door and entered Zito's screen porch, Schwenz opened the front door with the key, Skidmore said.

As the door opened, Schwenz was hit with the first shotgun blast, followed by Nickerson, who was thrown backward, Skidmore said.

Skidmore said Zito had not seen him on the porch, so he waited for Zito to come out, sprayed his eyes with pepper spray and arrested Zito.

Maryland State Police Tfc. Brian Fisher was the officer who officially arrested Zito after the shooting, Fisher said. He testified that he took Zito away from the shooting scene and back near his patrol car.

Fisher said Zito was yelling "Nazi Gestapo" at the officers and complained that someone broke into his home. Fisher said Zito also told him he had put a shotgun under his couch.

At that point, Fisher said, he arrested Zito and read him his Miranda Rights. Though one of the Miranda Rights is the right to keep silent, Fisher said Zito kept talking.

"'I thought I was protecting my home,' " Fisher quoted Zito as saying. " 'I didn't know they were police until I got outside.' "

Robert E. Williams, an investigator for the Queen Anne's County State's Attorney Office, formally interviewed Zito for about an hour that night, Williams testified. Again Zito was told he could remain silent. But Zito "just started talking," Williams said.

Williams said Zito complained that police were trying to "beat (him) up" and threaten his mother. Then, Williams said, Zito described the events leading up to the shooting.

"'When they went to the second door, I got the 12-gauge and took the safety off,'" Williams said Zito explained. Then, as the door opened, "'I just shot.'"

Williams said Zito talked with very little questioning by him or two other officers present at the interrogation.

Several other officers testified that Zito admitted shooting the two officers with no questioning. Two officers at the Wicomico County Detention Center also testified that they overheard Zito admit to the shooting while talking on the jail's telephone.

Defense lawyers later called Betty Zito to the stand. Wheeled into the courtroom in a wheelchair, Mrs. Zito was too weak to hold up her right hand to be sworn in. She lifted her right hand with her left hand as high as she could while being sworn in.

She testified that her son has his own trailer, which he rented from her. She said his rent is no different from the rent for the eight other trailers on her property.

She said Frank "wasn't so good" on Feb. 13, a condition made worse by the police breaking his storm door. She said police threatened to "tear gas" Zito's home unless he came outside.

She sobbed lightly as she described her frustration that day, trying to get someone on the telephone to help her and her son.

She said the only reason she gave the officers the key to Zito's trailer was so they wouldn't break his door and "tear gas" him.

Then she said she went around the side of Zito's trailer to peer inside and find him. That's when Mrs. Zito heard the "pop, pop" of the shotgun blasts, she said.

As defense lawyer Patricia Chappell wheeled Zito's mother past him and out of the courtroom, he gently put his hand on his mother's knee.

In their closing arguments, defense lawyer Brian Shefferman argued that Zito's Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure was violated by the three officers. He said Zito did not consent to the officers coming on his premises even though they entered his enclosed porch.

Shefferman argued that all evidence that came about because of the "illegal" entry to Zito's trailer should be suppressed during the jury trial. Most of the testimony that would be lost if this motion were to be granted would be Trooper Skidmore's description of the shooting and the events leading up to it.

Shefferman also argued that statements that Zito made to officers throughout the night should be suppressed because Zito was injured when he made them. Officers testified earlier that Zito was bleeding from a cut on his face that night. >{?

In a police state cops are not killed and the killer is not pepper sprayed and arrested. In a police state the perp would have been dead, the cops alive

No, that never happens, not here in the United States.

When Manuel Medina Ramirez, a 63-year-old retired golf-course groundskeeper, was routed from his slumber at 2 AM by armed men breaking down the door of his modest Stockton, CA. home, he instinctively reached for his bedside pistol. Shooting into the darkness, he brought one of the men down; the others returned fire, and Ramirez was shot dead in front of his son and daughter, who had also been awakened.

The armed men turned out to be a Stockton police antidrug team who had obtained a warrant for the house after a friend of the Ramirez family was found with marijuana in his car and gave the police the Ramirez address as his own. "He died not knowing they were police officers," said Maria Ramirez, the victim's 23-year-old daughter.

SALLISAW, OK-The morning began normally with preparations for school, work and a visit from a family member in the small mobile home. Suddenly police burst in, forced everyone to the floor, and fired at an unarmed mother holding her 4-year-old. An infant was only a few feet away. A teen-age daughter passed out in fear when she saw her mother shot.
First Waco, Texas ... then Ruby Ridge, Idaho ... now Sallisaw, Oklahoma?
That's what many locals in a rural town on the Oklahoma-Arkansas border are wondering after an unarmed mother, holding her young child, was shot at close range in her home by police who are now accused of a setup.

MODESTO, Calif. (September 14, 2000) - An 11-year-old Modesto boy was fatally shot early Wednesday morning when police SWAT team officers on a federal narcotics sweep raided his parents' home. Police said the shooting was an accident.

Johnnie Lawmaster returned home last December 16 to find that his front and back doors had been broken down with a battering ram, and his personal papers, legally-registered guns and ammo strewn all over the floor. Furniture was broken and gas, electricity and water had been shut off. The only explanation was a note reading: Nothing Found - ATF. Neighbors informed Lawmaster that 60agents in a joint team of local and state police and the Federal Bureau ofAlcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms had raided the house to search for illegal weapons. Lawmaster's lawyer is demanding to see the affidavit supporting the search warrant, but the Tulsa federal attorney has had it sealed.

William Hauselmann, a 64-year-old retired ranch foreman was wrestled and pinned to the floor of his Oakdale, CA. home by Stanislaus County drug agents as his wife was held at gunpoint in her bathrobe. "They were like bandits -whooping and hollering like they were the ones on drugs," said Marian Hauselmann, 61. The Sheriff's Department admits that the tip that led to the raid was "180 degress wrong."

Retirees Marian and William Hauselmann say their worst vice is that they eat too much bratwurst. But in November, a SWAT team with ski masks kicked down the doors of their Oakdale, Ca. home and held them at gunpoint for 45 minutesas they searched for drugs. The Sheriff's Department now admits that the informant's tip which led them to the house was "180 degrees wrong." But the Hauselmann's still have nightmares. "They put a pillowcase on my head and handcuffed me and forced me to stay on the floor," says Marian. "My husband and I tried to speak and they screamed to shut up. It was the worst thing that ever happened to us."

Alberto Sepulveda is no Elian Gonzalez. When 11-year-old Sepulveda was shot and killed by a SWAT team member during an early morning drug raid on his parents' Modesto home, the story barely made the papers. Yet, as did the Immigration and Naturalization Service raid on the Gonzalez home in Miami in May, the killing of Alberto Sepulveda highlights a troubling trend in law enforcement: stealth raids on the homes of sleeping citizens by heavily armed government agents.
Such raids are the hallmark of police states, not free societies, but as a growing number of Americans can attest, the experiences of these two boys are by no means isolated incidents.
Just ask the widow of Mario Paz. She was asleep with her husband in their Compton home at 11 p.m. in August 1999 when 20 members of the local SWAT team shot the locks off the front and back doors and stormed inside. Moments later, Mario Paz was dead, shot twice in the back, and his wife was outside, half-naked in handcuffs. The SWAT team had a warrant to search a neighbor's house for drugs, but Mario Paz was not listed on it. No drugs were found, and no member of the family was charged with any crime.

And then there is Denver resident Ismael Mena, a 45-year-old father of nine, killed last September in his bedroom by SWAT team members who stormed the wrong house.
Or Ramon Gallardo of Dinuba, Calif., shot 15 times in 1997 by a SWAT team with a warrant for his son.
Or the Rev. Accelyne Williams of Boston, 75, who died of a heart attack in 1994 after a Boston SWAT team executing a drug warrant burst into the wrong apartment.

HOUSTON (AP) - One of six officers involved in a drug raid shooting that left one man dead fired his pistol at the suspect until his magazine was empty, reloaded and resumed firing, the Houston Chronicle reported today.
The newspaper quoted unidentified sources familiar with the investigation, saying Officer David R. Barrera fired 24 of the 33 shots discharged in Pedro Oregon Navarro's apartment during the July 12 raid. Oregon died from that hail of bullets.
The six gang task force members raided Oregon's apartment early the morning of July 12 on the tip from an informant who had just been pulled over for public intoxication. The informant said drugs were being sold at the apartment.
Without a warrant, officers kicked in his bedroom door and shot Oregon, a father of two. They said he had pointed a gun at them, but it had not been fired. No drugs were found in the apartment.

These are just a few of the police abuses I found. Anyone who does not believe we are living in a police state is in a serious state of denial.

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