A Florida judge on Monday reportedly rejected access to video allegedly showing New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft paying for sex at a massage parlor.
Palm Beach County Judge Leonard Hanser ruled Monday that the search warrant to obtain video taken at Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida, “did not satisfy constitutional requirements,” writing that Kraft had a “reasonable, subjective expectation of privacy” in the facility, according to The Wall Street Journal.
{mosads}As part of Hanser’s ruling, all evidence obtained against Kraft through the police’s video surveillance warrant for the spa has been suppressed, and the traffic stop where police identified Kraft after leaving Orchids of Asia was ruled an unlawful search, according to the newspaper.
Kraft and his legal team have made the tapes the center of a dispute with prosecutors, but the back-and-forth has also involved several other spa customers who are not accused of any illegal activity and have sued the state and local police for filming them in a private space.
Prosecutors initially planned to make the video of Kraft at the spa public in April, but another judge, Joseph Marx, ordered a temporary hold on its release.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg wrote last month that the footage must be made public by law.
“The State, as the custodian of the records, cannot delay the release of records to allow a person to raise a constitutional challenge to the release of the documents,” Aronberg’s office wrote.