Market-slayings trial awaits key rulings

Bill Gang

Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2000 | 10:59 a.m.

Before Zane Floyd stands trial on charges he raped an outcall entertainer and then shot five people in a supermarket rampage, killing four of them, a hearing will be held to determine if his confession to police is legally admissible.

It is expected that Floyd will testify at that hearing about the events that led to his confession.

At this point, however, no date has been set for the hearing because defense attorneys said on Monday that they want to postpone Floyd's March 6 trial date.

Defense attorneys must file their postponement motion by Feb. 14, but Deputy Public Defender Curtis Brown said it will be filed under seal to prevent the public or the media from learning its contents. District Judge Jeff Sobel said he will rule on the matter Feb. 22.

The defense team already has complained about pre-trial publicity and twice filed motions to change the venue of the trial, although Sobel has rejected the moves.

District Attorney Stewart Bell opposes any delay and urged the defense to elicit witnesses and information for trial.

When Floyd was arraigned in June, Bell asked that the trial be set within four months. The defense asked for a year, and Sobel set the date at nine months.

In court Monday, Sobel noted that he had set aside time for the trial and was reluctant to postpone it for anything but an extraordinary reason. With the motion filed under seal, the public will not be apprised of the magnitude of the reason.

A delay in the trial likely would affect the custody status of an outcall entertainer, who said she was raped by Floyd for an hour before he left for the supermarket with his shotgun. She has said that Floyd told her he had 19 shells and was going to kill the first 19 people he saw.

The woman was ordered Monday to be released to a halfway house from the county jail, where she had been after being arrested as a material witness.

In preparation for the trial, Sobel ruled Monday on a variety of legal and evidentiary issues in setting the ground rules for the closely watched case, including:

Within minutes of Floyd's arrest, police said they obtained a tape-recorded statement from him in which he said, "I just went to shoot people, running and shooting at anything that moved."

He went on to say, "I got nowhere to go in life, dude.

"You know, I'm a bouncer. I'm 23 and I just moved back in with my (expletive) parents."

Floyd said the Marine Corps trained him as a killer.

"I went through all that (expletive), teaching me how to shoot people and kill people," he said to police. "It's not like the Marine Corps' fault. They didn't like turn me into a killer, you know. I mean, that's what you gotta do. I mean, I was a machine gunner."

Court documents noted that Floyd also talked about his drinking and gambling problems and his gambling losses just hours before the killings.