This time, it wasn't hooded undercover cops or grainy videos trying to show steaming sex - it was attorneys soberly trying to begin closing arguments in a case involving 21 men and women arrested in a sex club bust by undercover Broward County sheriff's deputies.
The defendants are charged with lewdness, carrying a maximum 60 days behind bars and a $500 fine, in a case getting national attention after last month's hearing in which an officer wore a hood to protect her identity while testifying luridly about the sting operations.
Before making the arrests, reports say, some undercover officers stripped down to a towel or less to observe activity in the now-closed Pompano Beach club Athena's Forum and the Fort Lauderdale club Trapeze II, which is still in business.
At Friday's hearing, defense attorneys made motions to dismiss the case because, they said, the police violated the defendants' right to due process by acting egregiously, says the Associated Press. ``What the police did was wrong, just wrong,'' attorney Daniel Aaronson told the judges, giving as an example the two officers who entered the hot tub naked.
The AP says assistant State Attorney Kristin Canner countered that the officers acted lawfully. ``They did not have sex with people or with each other,'' Canner said. ``They weren't committing the crimes. They were simply observing them.''
The three-judge panel will wrestle with that, as well as another key question: Are these sex clubs private or public spaces? If they are private, the defense asserts, patrons have a reasonable expectation of privacy, which the officers violated, the AP reports.
A ruling on dismissing the case could come within a month.
