The Ohio Supreme Court has declined convicted bathtub killer Ryan Widmer’s appeal.

The high court announced today it would not accept jurisdiction in the first appeal filed by Widmer’s attorney Michele Berry-Gosdey. The 12th District Court of Appeals has ruled against Widmer twice and Berry-Godsey will be filing her second appeal in the high court next week.

In the first appeal, Berry-Godsey’s stance was that police improperly seized the bathtub because they did not specifically name it in the search warrant they obtained for the house on Crested Owl Court. She also said when authorities ripped the fixture out of bathroom, they violated Widmer’s Fourth Amendment rights.

The 12th District opinion, penned by Judge Robert Hendrickson, found the bathtub to be the “instrument of the crime,” giving police the right to procure it.

“We find that police had probable cause to associate the bathtub, and the markings found therein, as the instrument used to drown Sarah,” he wrote. “Because the bathtub was believed to have been used to cause Sarah’s death, the bathtub, by its very nature, became an instrument of the crime and subject to seizure.”

In a 15-page memorandum in support of the high court hearing the case, Berry-Godsey said the court should take the opportunity to clarify the law on searches and seizures.

“Never has this court or any other court in Ohio (including the federal courts) permitted the seizure of real property without specific court authorization,” she wrote. “Here, that is precisely what the 12 District has authorized, thereby eviscerating the fourth amendment’s particularity and reasonableness requirements and contradicting 200 years of fourth amendment jurisprudence.”

The second appeal in the case centers around former lead detective Jeff Braley, but Berry touched on his apparent dishonesty in the first appeal as well. The judges said Judge Neal Bronson was not wrong to disallow evidence of Braley lying on a 14-year-old job application.

The Supreme Court only accepts about 7 percent to 12 percent of discretionary appeals filed. Widmer’s father, Gary, has said he thinks his son has a better chance of getting a new trial at the federal court level.

Widmer is serving a 15-year to life sentence for the 2008 drowning death of his wife, Sarah. The first trial in 2009 ended in a mistrial over juror misconduct. The second jury was hung and a third jury found him guilty in 2011.