Why wasn’t Lexington prosecutor accused of filming nude women charged?
Lexington police found no probable cause to pursue charges last year against a Fayette County assistant prosecutor accused of recording a nude woman through a window across the street from the prosecutor’s office.
The woman, who also filed a civil suit this month, filed a police report last year claiming a staffer in Fayette County took photographs and/or video without her consent while she was receiving a spray tan at an Airbnb in downtown Lexington.
According to the police report, obtained by the Herald-Leader through the Kentucky Open Records Act, a detective in Lexington police’s sex crimes unit wrote that he was unable to establish a “reasonable expectation of privacy” as required by law to establish that the crime of voyeurism had happened.
“Due to this, I am unable to establish probable cause to request a search warrant of a phone belonging to any of the suspects that would show elements of video voyeurism,” his report read.
Furthermore, no one involved in the case — the accuser, her lawyer, other prosecutors, the spray tan technician, or detectives — knows the identity of the person accused of recording the woman. The women could not make out an identification from across the street, and the assistant prosecutor was not named in the lawsuit.
The accuser’s lawsuit claims Fayette County’s top prosecutor, Angela Evans, denied a request from the accuser and her lawyer, James Yoder, to inspect the assistant prosecutor’s phone.
Evans noted in a statement last week that federal and state employment laws prohibit her from allowing such an inspection of her lawyers’ private phones.
A hearing date has not been set for the lawsuit.
Interviews in the case
A Lexington police detective interviewed the accuser, the spray tan technician, and at least four prosecutors in the county attorney’s office, according to the police report filed obtained by the Herald-Leader.
All names were redacted from the report.
Two female attorneys said they saw a woman wearing all black and waving from across the street on the day the accuser says she was recorded. Neither attorney said the woman was nude.
One of the female attorneys said she waved back, and the entire incident lasted about 15 seconds.
A male attorney told the investigator he saw the woman across the street but did not know if she was naked because of the distance between the buildings.
None of the attorneys interviewed said they took photos or videos of the woman.
The spray tan technician, who was operating out of an Airbnb on East Main Street, told the investigator her client was naked, with her back turned to the window. When the client turned around, she noticed someone was filming.
Both the accuser and the technician said they saw a man wearing a bright white shirt, with his phone at waist level, according to the police report.
The technician said she covered her client and waved at attorneys across the street, urging them to look away. She said when she went to the prosecutors’ office, she was given a business card and told to email her complaint.
In Kentucky, voyeurism is a Class A misdemeanor that applies when someone uses a camera or other recording device to observe, view, photograph or film various states of undress or sexual conduct without consent.
The charge applies when a person’s “reasonable expectation of privacy” is infringed upon in places like homes, bathrooms and locker rooms.
According to the Lexington police detective’s findings, he was unable to establish all the criteria for voyeurism required for the investigation to proceed.
The lawsuit
The accuser filed a civil suit on April 4, one year after the alleged incident happened.
Fayette County Attorney Angela Evans and the unidentified male prosecutor are named in the suit, which claims negligence, negligent hiring, voyeurism and distribution of sexually explicit images.
“There is no doubt in my mind that if an ordinary citizen had been accused of the same conduct he would have been charged with voyeurism,” Yoder said.
Evans said in a statement Friday that her office “fully cooperated with the outside investigation.”
“My office is confident that appropriate steps were taken to address the matter and that the claims being made will be thoroughly refuted,” she said.
It was not immediately clear if the employee still works for Evans’ office, which employs 14 assistant county attorneys.
