Robert Kraft’s lawyers challenge video surveillance, traffic stop

[Pat Patriot]

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Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s lawyers have pressed pause on their public P.R. fight with Florida law-enforcement to launch the next court battle against pending charges of solicitation of prostitution.

The attorneys hope to exclude from the case the video that was secretly created, arguing that the recording violated applicable legal standards and attacking the traffic stop used to identify Kraft after his initial visit to the day spa where sexual activity allegedly occurred.

Deadspin.com has the documents that were filed on Thursday. Among other things, the lawyers argue that video surveillance was not necessary in this case, pointing out that the authorities relied on ultimately unproven suspicions of human trafficking to “manufacture a patina of necessity” where no such need to videotape private encounters existed, given the big-picture significance of the alleged crime of prostitution and solicitation thereof.

If the lawyers can get the video tossed, it will become difficult if not impossible to prove that any violations occurred. And if the lawyers can successfully attack the traffic stop, the case will lack proof that Kraft was even in the facility — as long as he doesn’t take the witness stand.

While these arguments amount to technicalities, these are basic protections that apply to all Americans when it comes to how closely the government will monitor our lives. The basic argument is that certain private things should remain private, absent a compelling need to invade that space with cameras and recording devices — and that this threshold wasn’t met in the case of garden-variety massage-plus transactions.