Post by KC on Aug 27, 2006 23:11:06 GMT -5
August 28, 2006 - After leaving a store on Fruitville Road and putting her 2-year-old son in the back seat of her car, Andrea Johnson felt a jolt of fear and shock as she went to open the front door of her car to get behind the wheel.
An SUV had just pulled up beside her car, on her driver's side, and she realized it was the same SUV she had noticed some minutes before, when it had been parked in front of her car.
Only now, as Johnson got back into her own car, she says, she saw that the driver of the SUV had his pants around his knees, and he was looking right at her.
That worried and upset her.
She quickly got into her car and drove away, but wrote down the SUV's tag number as she left and then stopped nearby to call 911.
A Sarasota County deputy was nearby and got there fast, as the SUV was starting to leave. The deputy stopped the driver. The man had his pants on then, and denied ever having them off.
The deputy charged him with "exposure of sexual organs."
Johnson learned soon afterward that the man was an umpire in local youth sports.
That was in February. The trial was this month.
After it was over, Johnson -- whose husband, a police officer, had urged her to see the case through -- contacted me to say she was dismayed by the result.
The defendant, who has no known history of the kind of behavior he was charged with, was found not guilty in a non-jury trial. Judge Stephen Dakan stopped the trial soon after Johnson's testimony, when the prosecution rested its case.
The judge agreed with an argument by defense attorney Donald Grieco, who claimed that even if it happened just as Johnson testified, there was no crime.
Huh?
A Florida statute says it is a misdemeanor "to expose or exhibit one's sexual organs in public ... in a vulgar or indecent manner, or to be naked in public except in any place provided or set apart for that purpose."
But the defense had cited an acquittal in a case where a defendant had been publicly naked behind a protest sign, but hadn't done anything sexual or smutty. This was supposedly similar, albeit without the protest angle.
The key was the "vulgar or indecent manner" issue. Judge Dakan decided that element was missing from the evidence.
The prosecutor, Jarrod Malone, said he was taken aback by Dakan's ruling.
"I was sort of shocked. What he basically said is you can ride around in a car with your pants off," he said.
Not only ride, it seems, but also park next to a mother taking care of her child, a situation sure to make her feel invaded and vulnerable, as Johnson very much felt.
Seems to me that is crossing a line. Johnson and her husband certainly thinks so, too.
Grieco tells me that part two of the defense, had it been necessary, would have been trying to convince the judge that Johnson didn't really see she what she thought she saw.
Johnson says she has no doubts at all.
Since the man was acquitted, I won't name him here. But his lawyer told me that the man sent a fax resigning from all officiating.
I don't think it was because of the dress code.
www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/COLUMNIST36/608270312
An SUV had just pulled up beside her car, on her driver's side, and she realized it was the same SUV she had noticed some minutes before, when it had been parked in front of her car.
Only now, as Johnson got back into her own car, she says, she saw that the driver of the SUV had his pants around his knees, and he was looking right at her.
That worried and upset her.
She quickly got into her car and drove away, but wrote down the SUV's tag number as she left and then stopped nearby to call 911.
A Sarasota County deputy was nearby and got there fast, as the SUV was starting to leave. The deputy stopped the driver. The man had his pants on then, and denied ever having them off.
The deputy charged him with "exposure of sexual organs."
Johnson learned soon afterward that the man was an umpire in local youth sports.
That was in February. The trial was this month.
After it was over, Johnson -- whose husband, a police officer, had urged her to see the case through -- contacted me to say she was dismayed by the result.
The defendant, who has no known history of the kind of behavior he was charged with, was found not guilty in a non-jury trial. Judge Stephen Dakan stopped the trial soon after Johnson's testimony, when the prosecution rested its case.
The judge agreed with an argument by defense attorney Donald Grieco, who claimed that even if it happened just as Johnson testified, there was no crime.
Huh?
A Florida statute says it is a misdemeanor "to expose or exhibit one's sexual organs in public ... in a vulgar or indecent manner, or to be naked in public except in any place provided or set apart for that purpose."
But the defense had cited an acquittal in a case where a defendant had been publicly naked behind a protest sign, but hadn't done anything sexual or smutty. This was supposedly similar, albeit without the protest angle.
The key was the "vulgar or indecent manner" issue. Judge Dakan decided that element was missing from the evidence.
The prosecutor, Jarrod Malone, said he was taken aback by Dakan's ruling.
"I was sort of shocked. What he basically said is you can ride around in a car with your pants off," he said.
Not only ride, it seems, but also park next to a mother taking care of her child, a situation sure to make her feel invaded and vulnerable, as Johnson very much felt.
Seems to me that is crossing a line. Johnson and her husband certainly thinks so, too.
Grieco tells me that part two of the defense, had it been necessary, would have been trying to convince the judge that Johnson didn't really see she what she thought she saw.
Johnson says she has no doubts at all.
Since the man was acquitted, I won't name him here. But his lawyer told me that the man sent a fax resigning from all officiating.
I don't think it was because of the dress code.
www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/COLUMNIST36/608270312