Kraft’s lawyer calls cop tape from spa ‘spying’
Argues to keep surveillance video secret
An attorney for Patriots owner Robert Kraft on Tuesday argued a surveillance tape from an alleged prostitution sting at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Florida was so invasive it represented “spying,” and should be kept secret.
“He should have not expected the state would be spying on him over the course of these massages by putting secret cameras there,” attorney Derek Shaffer told a Fourth District Court of Appeals panel in a livestreamed hearing.
A Florida prosecutor, meanwhile, repeated the arguments made in a series of briefs over the course of the appeal that the searches and surveillance of the spa were conducted properly.
“These defendants didn’t leave on their underwear,” said Jeffrey DeSousa, Florida’s deputy solicitor general, of men caught in the sting last January. “Mr. Kraft removed his immediately … apparently that’s an indication he’s going to pay for sex so we were authorized to film that.”
Kraft was handed a significant victory last May when a Palm Beach County judge suppressed tapes of his alleged sex acts at the spa, captured by Jupiter, Fla., police in a five-day sting. Florida prosecutors immediately appealed the ruling, and have since argued that tapes of Kraft’s alleged activity do not deserve the same protection that is extended to innocent women who received legal massages during the same sting.
“You would never suppress the evidence that was properly seized,” DeSousa said, noting a suppression of after-hours recordings, as suggested by Kraft, would still leave him unprotected.
Shaffer also criticized Jupiter Police’s traffic stop of Kraft after he left the spa one day before the 2019 AFC Championship game in Kansas City, and suggested police never needed to record the spa as part of their probe.
“It’s not that traditional investigative techniques could not work, it was working,” Shaffer said, noting investigators’ financial probes and evidence seizures near the building. “By all indication, traditional investigative techniques were especially fit for (this) purpose.”
Kraft’s solicitation case has been on hold since last July pending the appeal. A ruling was not reached by judges immediately after the hearing.