Robert Kraft’s legal team was scrambling Wednesday to keep Florida prosecutors from releasing video evidence of sexual services he allegedly received from a massage parlor.
The Palm Beach County State Attorney’s office surprised Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, and other defendants Wednesday morning by announcing they would release the video as soon as possible, saying Florida’s broad open records laws gave them no other option.
Kraft and 24 other men were charged with misdemeanor solicitation of prostitution in January after police identified them as having received services at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Fla. Part of the evidence collected against the men, as well as two women who ran the spa, was video surveillance installed by police.
Kraft and other defendants filed motions to have the video evidence sealed and suppressed last month, and a hearing is scheduled on the matter for April 26. But State Attorney Dave Aronberg filed an intent to release the evidence Wednesday morning as part of the case against the two women, Hua Zhang and Lei Wang, not in the cases against Kraft and the other men.
Kraft, who is fighting the two misdemeanor charges with a notably large, high-end legal team, responded by filing a motion to intervene in the case against Zhang and Wang. Kraft’s team argues that there is no public interest served by releasing the video, and that no action should be taken before a judge has a chance to rule on their motions to seal or suppress the evidence.
Prosecutors offered him and the other defendants a diversion agreement last month that would allow them to have the cases expunged and the evidence sealed if they agreed to certain conditions, including an admission that they would have lost had the case gone to court. But Kraft has refused to concede that he committed a crime, and has, instead, mounted an expensive legal defense that has surprised both prosecutors and some members of his own inner circle.
A group of media companies, including ESPN, has intervened in the case, suing for the release of all material, including the video evidence. State prosecutors said in court documents that there is nothing about Kraft’s case that allows them to withhold the evidence from the public. The material might be obscene, but that’s not a reason to exempt it from release, they argued. The filing also noted that as a practice, the state pixilates or blurs sexually graphic content.