TMCnet News
Cop on stand: Man put digital camera under child's skirtSANFORD, Jun 17, 2010 (The Orlando Sentinel - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- An Altamonte Springs police officer told jurors Thursday that he watched as a 35-year-old man knelt in a department store and put a digital camera beneath the skirt of a schoolgirl. "He started making a motion like he was pushing a button," said Officer Daniel Seidenfaden. The officer was a key prosecution witness at the trial of Ty Standley, of Deltona, who is charged with two counts of video voyeurism. Jurors began deliberations shortly after 4 p.m. Standley did not testify, and his lawyer, Andrew Clark, called no witnesses and put on no evidence. Assistant State Attorney Gino Feliciani told jurors that Standley slipped an iPhone beneath the skirt of a 10-year-old girl and snapped photos while she shopped for back-to-school shoes at Sears. Standley was arrested at Altamonte Mall Aug. 19 after store personnel noticed him following the child. Prosecutors played a nine-minute store security video. In it, Standley can be seen, a cell phone in hand, in the women's shoe department. He picks up and examines several women's shoes, but he also watches and repeatedly walks close to the child, who's wearing a pink skirt. Time after time, they drift apart then come back together. She appears not to notice him, although, at times, they come within inches of each other. He also, at times, bends down. Feliciani told jurors that's when Standley snapped photos. The video, though, never shows Standley putting his iPhone beneath the girl's skirt. Feliciani said that's because the camera was partially obscured by shoe racks. Seidenfaden, though, recounted what he saw from 30 feet away. "Mr. Standley bent down on one knee, took out his iPhone and stuck it directly under the young female's skirt," Seidenfaden said. A computer expert with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office testified that she analyzed Standley's iPhone and found out-of-focus photos taken at the same time the child and Standley were in the shoe department. Prosectors showed them to jurors, but they were impossible to make out, except that they showed pink fabric and were pointed toward the ceiling or a bright light. Standley's attorney told jurors they should vote to acquit because the state couldn't prove the photos showed the girl. "There's this presumption of what's happening," he said, referring to the store security video. Don't, he warned, "mold what you're seeing to what you're told." The child, now 11 and just finished with fifth grade, testified Thursday morning. That day at Sears, she said, she wore a pink "skort", a combination skirt and pair of shorts. She went to the Sears to shop for shoes, she said. Her mom was in the children's shoe department with her 5-year-old sister, she said, not far away. "I was looking for shoes in the ladies' section," she said. If she noticed Standley that day, she did not tell jurors. She did see him on the security video afterward, she said. She had never met him before, she told jurors, and he said not a word to her that day. The trial began Monday with jury selection. The panel then took two days off but returned today to hear evidence. Rene Stutzman can be reached at [email protected] or 407-650-6394. To see more of The Orlando Sentinel or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.OrlandoSentinel.com. Copyright (c) 2010, The Orlando Sentinel, Fla. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |