Posted on 07/03/2008 11:18:37 AM PDT by Coleus
Sheriff's detectives conducted a proper search of the home of a youth pastor even without a warrant, a Manatee County judge ruled Thursday. The ruling shot down a defense challenge and now means prosecutors can use videotapes and hidden cameras seized in the voyeurism investigation last year.
Authorities did not need a warrant to search the home of Bethel Baptist Church youth pastor Matthew C. Porter because a friend who had been house-sitting agreed to let detectives inspect Porter's home in Ellenton, Manatee County Judge George K. Brown Jr. determined. The detectives, the judge said, acted reasonably. Investigators say Porter, 31, secretly taped girls between the ages of 12 and 16 changing and showering at his rental house in Ellenton and in his apartment in Bradenton.
Porter has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of voyeurism, a misdemeanor. He resigned from the church in July. Porter's attorney, Henry E. Lee, challenged the evidence in the case, saying Porter's friend had no authority to let detectives search Porter's house in the 300 block of Sally Lee Drive. The woman did not live there, he argued.
Merely being at a house, Lee said, does not give a person the authority to let police come in and look around. The Herald-Tribune is not identifying the house-sitter because police say her 14-year-old daughter is a victim in the case. "She indicated to us she was given free rein of the house," a sheriff's detective, Brad Patterson, said in court Thursday.
Porter wanted her there when he was away to watch his dog. The woman had spent the night there with her children. She had keys to the house. Lee said detectives should have had a warrant to search the home or asked Porter, not his friend, for consent. Detectives knew Porter was cutting short his trip to Mexico and would be home within hours. The woman was at Porter's house in early July when an air freshener fell from a bathroom wall. It was a camera. The woman and her daughters found tapes and DVDs in Porter's bedroom and took them to Bethel Baptist to watch.
"It was exactly what I thought it was," the woman said in court Thursday. Assistant State Attorney Richard F. Cipriano said the woman acted on her own accord when she found the tapes and turned them over to investigators. She was not an agent for the police, Cipriano said. Detectives, the prosecutor said, acted in good faith when the woman signed a form that gave investigators permission to search Porter's house. Authorities said they restricted the warrantless search of Porter's home to areas where the woman found evidence of a crime.
Pastor is a dirt bag but the woman has no standing to let police search his house without a warrant and they went there knowing he was not there. Judge is wrong.
People aint perfect. Christians are people and aren’t perfect.
That said I feel a lot safer taking my children to church then to the mall.
Actually, I do have a bishop and a hierarchy, but most of these threads deal with churches that don’t....or do so only minimally.
So...you’re correct about them, but not about me.
All of our bishops are under the guidance of the council of bishops, and that presiding bishop, but more importantly under what we call “The General Conference.” The GC is the gathering of the elected delegates of the entire church.
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