Gerard John Schaefer Jr. was a sheriff’s deputy in Martin County, Florida, when he was charged with murder, and in October 1973 he was convicted of killing two teenage girls, Susan Place and Georgia Jessup, and given two life sentences. He was suspected in the deaths and disappearances of many more women and girls. These two entries, fewer than two hundred words between them, are all Florida’s published appellate record holds on his case.
The first, from September 27, 1974, is a single line: an appeal in a proceeding captioned In re Gerard John Schaefer, Jr., from the Circuit Court for Martin County, dismissed. The second, from February 14, 1975, affirms his conviction in a per curiam opinion of a few sentences. Its one point of substance is that he had been properly charged by information rather than by grand jury indictment, because the crime was committed at a time when Florida had no capital crimes. After the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, murder in Florida was briefly not a capital offense.
Schaefer spent the rest of his life in Florida prisons, writing about murder and suing people who wrote about him. He was stabbed to death in his cell at Florida State Prison by another inmate on December 3, 1995.
These entries say nothing about the murders beyond the fact of the conviction and the charging question, and the names of the two victims, the date of the conviction and the circumstances of Schaefer’s death in the opening come from the trial record as reported, not from either court. The first entry does not say what the proceeding under appeal was, and we have not guessed.
Both are public records of Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal, printed in full. The only people named are Schaefer, the trial judge, the lawyers on both sides and the three judges who decided the 1975 appeal. Nothing has been withheld, and the text needed no repair; one judge’s name is broken across a line as “RED-DICK” in the reporter, and it is left that way.
In re Gerard John SCHAEFER, Jr.
No. 73-1153.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
Sept. 27, 1974.
Appeal from Circuit Court, Martin County; C. Pfeiffer Trowbridge, Judge.
Appeal dismissed.
Gerard J. SCHAEFER, Jr., Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
No. 73-1159.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
Feb. 14, 1975.
Rehearing Denied May 6, 1975.
Elton H. Schwarz, Public Defender, Stuart, and John E. Long, Jr., Sp. Asst. Public Defender, Bay Shore, N. Y., for appellant.
Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, and C. Marie Bernard, Asst. Atty. Gen., West Palm Beach, for appellee.
[OPINION BY PER CURIAM. type=majority]
PER CURIAM.
Upon review and consideration of the points raised in this appeal we are of the opinion that no reversible error has been demonstrated. In particular, we are satisfied that the defendant was properly charged by information for the commission of a noncapital offense committed at a time when capital crimes were abolished in Florida. Accordingly, the judgment and conviction are affirmed.
Affirmed.
CROSS and MAGER, JJ., and RED-DICK, THOMAS J., Jr., Associate Judge, concur.