It looks like New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is off the hook.
Florida authorities have announced that they will no longer pursue criminal charges against the high-profile businessman and philanthropist given that an appeals court previously tossed out the key piece of evidence in the case.
With so many violent felons running loose, It’s astonishing that law enforcement wasted valuable public resources on a scenario — whether one approves of the behavior or not — involving consenting adults voluntarily engaging in commerce.
To make a long story short, as this blog has outlined, there was no probable cause for the secret video surveillance at the location, and as such, no probable cause for a traffic stop on a vehicle within which Mr. Kraft was a passenger.
Making matters worse, ignorant sports media pundits– whose favorite expression ironically seems to be “let’s be honest” — and others rushed to judgment immediately after the arrest, forgetting about the presumption of innocence in the legal system, and demanded that Kraft plead guilty to the misdemeanor charges.
They also insisted that the NFL fine and/or suspend Kraft (which might still be on the table), and some activists even clamored for the league to force him to sell the team.
From the New York Post:
Prosecutors said Monday that they won’t challenge an appeals court ruling that banned them from using a surveillance video from inside the Orchids of Asia Day Spa against Kraft, which all but killed their sex-for-cash case against the billionaire NFL owner…
Kraft, 79, who owns a home in Palm Beach, was among 25 men accused in February 2019 of paying for sex acts at the Jupiter, Florida, massage parlor.
But last month the 4th District Court of Appeals ruled that investigators had fumbled by secretly recording the surveillance footage and violated Kraft’s right to privacy. The footage could therefore not be presented as evidence if he went to trial — essentially killing the case.
Authorities were wary that the case could set an unfavorable precedent, ESPN reported.
If the state challenged the decision to the Florida Supreme Court and lost, it could have ‘broader, negative implications’ on future law enforcement investigations beyond the Kraft case, the Florida Attorney General’s Office said…
‘Based on that analysis … the decision was made not to seek further discretionary review,’ attorney general spokeswoman Kylie Mason said in an email to The Associated Press.
The state’s decision means the charges against Kraft and about 20 other men will likely be dismissed. The recordings, which have not been made public, are the only known potential evidence that the men paid for sex.
The Kraft outcome means that prosecutors won’t be able to ruin the lives of the other arrestees, i.e., those ordinary, peaceful citizens who were caught up in the voyeuristic cop sting.
Kraft’s lawyers also want the tapes, which media ghouls would love to get their hands on, as it were, eradicated:
Kraft’s attorneys declined comment on the decision, but filed a motion Monday asking that the recordings be destroyed so they could never be released to the public. They said Kraft might be willing to pay the state’s costs if anyone challenges a destruction order.
Kraft, 79, a widower, had pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution.
Bottom line: It appears that Kraft is getting off, so to speak.
Added: The generally woke ProFootballTalk website actually agrees with this blog’s assessment:
…[P]rosecutors feared that the Florida Supreme Court would react to an obvious violation of individual privacy rights by creating a standard that would have made it even harder to violate individual privacy rights in the future.
The simple reality of the case continues to be that, while operations like this surely have racked up plenty of quick and quiet guilty pleas in the past, Kraft fought back. In doing so, he exposed a corrupt, unconstitutional practice that was tantamount to spying on private citizens without probable cause to believe any crime was being committed.
Basically, they messed with the wrong guy. Kraft’s defense lawyers brought the underhanded tactics to light, and prosecutors decided to cut bait in recognition of the reality that the bigger boat they needed was nowhere to be found.
