Attorney objects to video as evidence

Restaurateur charged with sexual assault

The attorney for a Regent Square restaurant owner charged with sexual assault argued Thursday that a video found on the owner’s phone should not be allowed as evidence in the case because of a flawed search warrant.

The video found on the phone of Adnan Pehlivan, 47, who owned the restaurant Istanbul Sofra, depicts a man sneaking into a woman’s bedroom and performing oral sex on her while she is asleep — the same act the defendant is accused of doing.

Mr. Pehlivan, whose restaurant closed in January, is charged with stalking a woman as she left a South Side bar on May 14, 2018, following her home and then breaking into her apartment on Josephine Street and sexually assaulting her as she slept.

The woman woke up and fought him off, and he ran from the apartment, she said.

Lee Rothman, Mr. Pehlivan’s attorney, argued before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning that the video should be excluded from evidence in the case because the search warrant for Mr. Pehlivan’s phone was too broad and lacked probable cause.

Mr. Rothman argued that Pittsburgh police Detective Bryan Sellers did not include information in the search warrant that specifically tied Mr. Pehlivan’s phone to the crime and argued the detective erred when he asked to review the entirety of the phone’s contents, rather than specific parts, like some text messages or particular location data.

“This warrant is defective and lacks probable cause,” Mr. Rothman said.

Assistant District Attorney Edward H. Scheid countered

that there was sufficient probable cause for the warrant and said that Detective Sellers needed to review the phone in part to corroborate the victim’s claim that she did not give her phone number or address to Mr. Pehlivan when she met him that night in the bar.

The search warrant was part of an ongoing investigative effort, Mr. Scheid told Judge Manning.

“Probable cause is probable cause,” Mr. Scheid said. “It doesn’t mean anything more than probable.”

He added that investigators also sought the phone’s location data.

Surveillance video from the night of the attack shows Mr. Pehlivan driving his silver BMW behind the victim and her housemates as they walked away from Kopy’s Bar not long after midnight, prosecutors said. The car eventually passes them, and the driver pulls over to the curb and turns off his headlights until the women catch up, at which point he follows them again. He repeated that behavior until they got in a car and drove to their home on Josephine Street in the South Side Slopes, according to prosecutors.

Judge Manning previously called the actions in the video a “brazen act of stalking.” The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette does not typically name victims of sexual assault.

Judge Manning told both attorneys that he would review the issue and rule at a later date. The case is headed to a jury trial, with jury selection scheduled to start Feb. 25.

Mr. Pehlivan, who is from Turkey and became a U.S. citizen in 1996, has been denied bond as he awaits trial and is being held in the Allegheny County Jail. He opened Istanbul Sofra in 2014; it operated for about eight months after his arrest before shutting its doors.