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Eleventh
Judicial Circuit, Miami-Dade County Case # 98-8943
Sentencing Judge: The Honorable Stanford Blake
Attorney, Trial: Richard Houlihan & Kenneth White – Assistant Public
Defenders
Attorney, Direct Appeal: Scott W. Sakin – Special Assistant Public
Defender
Date of Offense:
03/17/98
Date of
Sentence: 03/24/03
Circumstances of Offense:
On 03/17/98, two officers
responded to an attempted suicide call at Michael Seibert’s apartment.
The officers knocked on the door. Seibert eventually answered and said
he was okay, told them to leave, and then shut the door.
The officers demanded to
come inside and forced their way through the door under the impression
there was an emergency situation where someone could be hurt. The
officers checked Seibert for weapons and injury.
While looking over
Seibert’s apartment, one of the officers noticed a severed foot in the
bath tub and yelled to the other officer there had been a
homicide. Seibert took off running but was tackled and apprehended in
the apartment hallway. Seibert was then taken into custody.
While being booked, the
officer noted that Seibert’s behavior was unusual and that he acted as
though he was “out of it”. During questioning, Seibert said he was high
on heroin and cocaine.
The body parts found in
Seibert’s bath tub belonged to Karolay Adrianza. Adrianza had gone out
the previous evening to the beach with her boyfriend and never returned
home. Seibert had a roommate named William “Ace” Green who did not pay
rent and made money by selling drugs.
Green testified that on
March 17, 1998, he saw Seibert with Karolay Adrianza and her boyfriend,
Danny Navarres, in their apartment. The three ingested a large quantity
of cocaine. Seibert sent Green and Navarres to the store to buy
cigarettes and beer. When they returned, Navarres did not enter the
apartment and said he had to go buy something and would be back later.
When Green arrived back
at the apartment alone, Adrianza asked for her boyfriend and made
several phone calls to see where he was. After about 30 minutes,
Seibert asked Green to leave and keep an eye out for Navarres stating
that he wanted to be alone with Adrianza.
Green had noticed that
Seibert had been flirting with Adrianza. Green left the apartment and
went to a laundromat to talk to a friend who worked there. After a
while, Green wanted back into the apartment. He did not have a key so
he called several times, but Seibert would not answer.
Green then knocked on the
door and Seibert said to come back later making comments that he only
needed a little bit longer before he would be in her pants. Later on,
when Green knocked on the door again, Seibert asked him to go buy some
cigarettes. Green refused and said he wanted inside. An argument
occurred and, at one point, Seibert stated he was going to kill
himself. Green then called the police and reported a suicide attempt.
Adrianza’s body was in
the bath tub clothed in a shirt and underwear. Most of the soft tissue
below her waist had been removed (approximately 40 to 50 pounds) which
included part of her abdominal wall, the large bowel and part of the
small bowel, which had been flushed down the toilet. Adrianza’s left
hand, left foot and left ankle and been separated from the body.
Examiners estimated that the cutting and flushing of her body that
Seibert did would have taken about an hour.
Adrianza died from
strangulation. There was also evidence of Seibert’s semen inside
Adrianza’s body. It could not be determined if Seibert had sex with
Adrianza before or after her death.
Prior
Incarceration History in the State of Florida:
Offense
Offense
Sentence
Prison Sentence
05/08/86
Kidnap; Comm. or
Fac. Felony
01/05/87
15Y 0M 0D
05/08/86
Grand Theft Motor
Vehicle
01/05/87
5Y 0M 0D
05/08/86
Burg Unoccstruc/CV
or Att.
01/05/87
15Y 0M 0D
05/12/86
1st DG
Mrd/Premed. Or Attempted
01/05/87
30Y 0M 0D
05/12/86
Kinap; Comm. or
Fac. Felony
01/05/87
30Y 0M 0D
05/12/86
Grand Theft Motor
01/05/87
5Y 0M 0D
Trial Summary:
04/01/98
Indicted as follows:
Count I:
First-Degree Murder
11/21/02 Jury
returned guilty verdicts on the sole count of the indictment.
02/11/03 Jury
recommended death by a vote of 9-3.
03/24/03
Sentenced as follows:
Count I:
First-Degree Murder – Death
Case
Information:
On 04/28/03, Siebert
filed a direct appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. Seibert claimed
that error occurred in the court denying his motions to suppress
evidence and statements from the police entering his apartment
non-consensually without a warrant, thus violating Siebert’s
constitutional rights. He also contended that error occurred in the
trial court refusing his motion for mistrial based on irrelevant and
highly prejudicial evidence presented by the state, which violated his
Fourteenth Amendment right. In his appeal, Siebert also argued that,
under the circumstances of his case, the death sentence is
disproportionate and violates the Constitution. Siebert argued that the
jury did not have a fair consideration in the sentencing recommendation
due to the prosecutor’s improper and prejudicial reference to irrelevant
criminal activity as a non-statutory aggravating circumstance. His final
arguments referred to the Florida Capital sentencing scheme as being
unconstitutional for several reasons.
The Florida Supreme Court
affirmed Seibert’s conviction and sentence on 02/16/06.
On 06/28/06, Seibert
filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari in the United States Supreme
Court that was denied on 10/02/06.
On
09/11/07, Seibert filed a 3.850 Motion for Post-Conviction Relief in the
State Circuit Court. This motion is currently pending.
Floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us
Freed kidnapper facing execution after resorting
to murder
ThisIsHampshire.net
Monday 25th Nov 2002
A MAN freed from jail after
serving only one-third of his sentence for the attempted murder of
a Hampshire tourist is facing the death penalty in the USA after
butchering a young woman.
Michael Seibert used a shoelace
to choke an 18-year-old American student before placing her body in the
bath, cutting off a hand and foot and flushing chunks of her flesh down
the lavatory.
The 1998 crime came less than a
year after Seibert won an early release from a Florida jail, having
served only ten years of a 30-year sentence for bludgeoning Kathryn
Jones from Southampton.
Ms Jones, then 27, was left for
dead in a field after being abducted from a telephone box in Miami Beach
while on holiday in 1986.
Seibert took her to a secluded
field and smashed her head with a porcelain toilet until she passed out,
leaving her with severe brain injuries.
When found, she was close to
death and spent three weeks in a coma before being flown home to
Eastleigh for further extensive treatment at Southampton General
Hospital, where she had previously worked as a nurse.
She first regained consciousness
when her boyfriend Roger Jones was flown over to Miami. Medical staff
advised him to shout in her ear and after several hours of bellowing he
got through to her.
Initially she could remember
nothing of her holiday or of the attack and could say little apart from
her own name.
Ms Jones, formerly of Winchester
Road, took advantage of a last-minute standby ticket to fly to Florida
for a two-week holiday. Seibert attacked her as she was about to take a
day-trip to Key West, the southern-most tip of the United States.
Court records revealed that when
arrested for Karolay Adrianza's killing four years ago, Seibert told
police: "My parents are really going to be upset at me. This is the
second time I've been in trouble."
Seibert, 34, is charged with
first-degree murder for the killing of Adrianza, who had attended a
party at his Miami Beach apartment on March 16, 1998.
According to court documents,
Seibert's flatmate William "Ace" Greene called police at 10am the
following morning to say he had been shut out of the apartment and
feared Seibert may be about to commit suicide inside. He claimed to have
heard Seibert shout: "I'm losing it, I'm going to kill myself."
Police later forced their way
into the property and detained him after finding Ms Adrianza's butchered
body in the bath.
Seibert, a former restauarant
dishwasher, had been using cocaine and heroin that night, court
documents revealed.
Greene's testimony was videotaped
earlier this year through a satellite link-up between a Miami courtroom
and a prison in Ecuador, where he is serving time for drugs offences.
Prosecutor Flora Seff wants
Seibert sent to the death chamber when he is sentenced next year.
Seibert has always publicly
denied the attempted murder of Kathryn Jones, but was linked by forensic
evidence and later bragged about the incident to fellow inmates while
being held in custody.
People in Florida were so
horrified by her ordeal that they set up a fund for her which, along
with contributions from colleagues and former patients in Southampton,
raised more than £16,500.
Since Seibert's early release in
1997, US law has been changed to ensure that violent criminals serve at
least 85 per cent of their sentences.
