Several legal academics told BuzzFeed News the taped “confession” at the end of HBO’s The Jinx could be used in court against him in a murder trial.
Mike Segar / Reuters
Sunday night's finale of the HBO documentary The Jinx ended with a bombshell. The subject, Robert Durst — the son of a New York City real estate tycoon and a suspect in three separate murders — was recorded in a bathroom wearing a live microphone. In an unguarded moment of solitude, and after being confronted with new evidence linking him to one killing, Durst muttered, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course."
The apparent confession was only discovered by the HBO filmmakers in June 2014, about two years after the April 2012 interview, director Andrew Jarecki told the New York Times .
At court hearing Monday in New Orleans, where Durst was arrested, he agreed to go to Los Angeles to face charges relating to the 2000 murder of Susan Berman.
Now, questions have been raised as to whether his apparent "confession" could be admitted in court.
"His defense team has a tough road ahead," said Silas J. Wasserstrom, a law professor at Georgetown University and former chief of the appellate section of the D.C. public defender service.
(Coincidentally, Wasserstrom also said he went to the same high school as Durst. "I don't remember him, but my wife was in his grade and she does," he said.)
HBO
Durst's defense could try to argue that the recording is inadmissible because it was made when the wealthy eccentric was alone in a bathroom and had an expectation of privacy. But a number of legal experts told BuzzFeed News that argument would be unlikely to succeed.
Wasserstrom rejected the expectation of privacy argument. "If it happened the way it's been reported, that he muttered this in the bathroom, I don't think there's any [constitutional] issues here," he said.
Moreover, Jarecki argued to the New York Times that there was nothing "surreptitious" about the recording, because Durst had been well aware he was wearing a microphone during the interviews.
This issue of Durst's "consent" to the recording was also raised by Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University.
"While California's interception laws are more demanding than those in many other states, the consent of the ... sole participant to the 'conversation' is enough," Richman told BuzzFeed News.
"While Durst might end up arguing otherwise and facts might come out to aid his argument," Richman said, Durst's knowledge that he was wearing a microphone "likely counts as a consent."
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