State prosecutors want an appeals court to allow them to use video evidence of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft receiving sexual favors at a Jupiter massage parlor earlier this year to convict him of soliciting prostitution.
Kraft, 78, won a major court victory in May when Palm Beach County Judge Leonard Hanser ruled prosecutors were forbidden from using secretly recorded videos because
the warrants used to plant the cameras were legally insufficient.
The problem was the video, which was recorded by cameras police secretly installed while investigating sexually related human trafficking allegations at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa.
Kraft was one of two dozen men nabbed as part of the investigation. Hanser ruled the police improperly obtained the warrants that allowed them to install the cameras that captured the incriminating videos.
But prosecutors fought back in an appeal filed late Tuesday, defending the legality of the warrant and saying police acted in good faith gathering the evidence.
“Over a 5-day span during which police recorded activity in a massage business suspected of operating as a brothel, police observed overwhelming evidence of felony and misdemeanor prostitution offenses, with 90% of recorded video reflecting criminal misconduct,” prosecutors wrote in a brief filed with the Fourth District Court of Appeal.
The only people whose privacy rights were violated by the warrant, according to the brief, were people who were not charged with a crime. Out of 39 videos recorded, four captured legally permissible massages, according to the brief.
Kraft’s “claim of a Fourth Amendment violation was predicated on alleged harms to the privacy of other persons who have not been charged with any crime and whose rights are not at issue in this case,” the prosecutors wrote. The video should still be admitted to establish crimes were committed by Kraft, they argued.
The brief was filed by the Florida Attorney General’s Office.
-- Sun-Sentinel