WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — After an appeals court ruled in his favor, and Florida’s attorney general said she wouldn’t take an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, prostitution solicitation charges against New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft were dropped Thursday, along with those against more than a dozen other men, according to court documents.
Kraft, along with others across Palm Beach and several Treasure Coast counties, was arrested on the misdemeanor charges in 2019 after law enforcement agencies, including Jupiter police, secretly installed hidden cameras inside several massage parlors in an attempt to uncover an alleged prostitution ring.
How the detectives obtained the video showing the alleged crimes, through the controversial means known as “sneak-and-peek” warrants, is what eventually brought the case to its end.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said his prosecutors’ hands were forced with the rulings.
“Without these videos, we cannot move forward with our prosecutions, and thus we are ethically compelled to drop the cases against all the defendants,” he said at a news conference Thursday.
On Wednesday, prosecutors in the Treasure Coast told TCPalm.com they also were dropping charges in their cases. About 60 men will have their cases dropped in Indian River County, but 55 men already have completed diversion programs, according to Assistant State Attorney Steven Wilson.
Before the cases were dropped, four men in Palm Beach County avoided convictions by completing their pretrial diversion programs, and another took a plea that gave him an adjudication withheld, meaning he would not have a conviction on his record.
Though all of the remaining misdemeanor cases in Palm Beach County have been dropped against the alleged “johns,” the felony cases against Hua Zhang, the Orchids of Asia day spa’s owner, Lei Wang, its manager, and Shen Mingbi remain open.
All are charged with deriving support from proceeds of prostitution. Aronberg said his office still has enough evidence in those cases to proceed.
“Orchids of Asia Day Spa was a notorious brothel in a family shopping center,” Aronberg said. “Rich guys from a local country club lined up to receive sex acts throughout the day until the place closed around midnight.”
On Aug. 19, the 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that the videos taken on hidden cameras that allegedly showed individuals paying for sexual acts at the Jupiter day spa could not be used in the case against them.
As the judges in the lower courts ruled last year, the appellate court unanimously concluded that “total suppression was the appropriate remedy under the circumstances of this case.”
“The type of law enforcement surveillance utilized in these cases is extreme,” the 23-page opinion read.
Aronberg said Thursday he was disappointed with the court’s decision, but he stood behind Jupiter police for investigating the case as well as his office for deciding to prosecute.
Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office released a statement to The Palm Beach Post on Tuesday saying her office was “disappointed by the 4th District’s decision,” but that after review with the solicitor general, she has chosen not to seek an appeal with Florida’s Supreme Court.
“These attorneys determined that review was unlikely and raised concerns that a decision by the Florida Supreme Court against the state on these case facts could have broader, negative implications beyond the limited facts of this case, which could affect law enforcement efforts in the future,” she said in the written statement.
Aronberg said he had similar concerns that the high court could expand the ruling to ban hidden cameras entirely in cases of prostitution or “other criminal enterprises.”
In February 2019, Kraft, a part-time Palm Beach resident, was charged with dozens of other men after authorities from Martin, Indian River and other counties revealed alleged prostitution rings, with hundreds of recordings of alleged sex acts performed inside licensed day spas. In addition, four women who worked at the Jupiter spa were arrested.
After the arrests, prosecutors and several law enforcement agencies involved said they believed the spas may be linked to human trafficking.
To date, no one has been charged with human trafficking in relation to these cases, according to court records.
On Thursday, Aronberg said none of the “johns” were accused of human trafficking, and there was no evidence that they had any knowledge of it, either. Instead, he said, it was those who worked at the spa that led investigators to those beliefs. Among other evidence, authorities discovered some of the workers were living in the spas.
“Although we cannot prove human trafficking beyond a reasonable doubt, there was evidence of human trafficking in the overall investigation,” he said.
Defense attorneys argued that the “sneak-and-peek” warrants violated their clients’ rights to privacy and jeopardized their rights to a fair trial.
The cameras were installed under a false bomb threat report, and the recording ran continuously for days, showing both those allegedly paying for sex and also those receiving non-criminal day-spa massages, according to court documents.
Authorities and prosecutors argued that the controversial warrants were essential to getting evidence of the prostitution.
Jupiter Police Detective Andrew Sharp said the spas were “not a run-of-the-mill prostitution business,” during a court hearing in 2019.
“It was a criminal enterprise,” he said.
In May 2019, County Judge Leonard Hanser agreed with defense attorneys and wrote in his ruling: “The fact that some totally innocent women and men had their entire lawful time spent in a massage room fully recorded and viewed intermittently by a detective-monitor is unacceptable and results from the lack of sufficient pre-monitoring written guidelines.”
Circuit Judge Joseph Marx agreed with Hanser’s ruling and suppressed the videos allegedly showing four women engaged in prostitution-related crimes at Orchids of Asia.
He said the search warrants lacked the “minimization” requirement, which are the steps taken by police to protect the innocent during covert surveillance.
“If you’re going to do it, you have to do it correctly,” Marx said.
In a motion filed this month, Kraft’s attorneys have asked that because the evidence was suppressed, the recordings should be destroyed to prevent any “improper use and that any public access rights are superseded by Kraft’s constitutional rights.”
No court date has been set to hear the motion.