State wants Kraft lawyers held in contempt. They, in turn, say prosecutors are desperate
Billionaire NFL owner Robert Kraft wandered into the wrong “Asian spa” and got himself charged with a crime. Now his lawyers find themselves accused by prosecutors of contempt of court.
The defense lawyers say it is all nonsense.
It’s just another day in the strange saga involving two separate-but-related court cases. One involves the misdemeanor solicitation-of-prostitution prosecution of Kraft, owner of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. The other involves the felony prosecution of two women who worked at the spa.
In a motion filed Tuesday, the state asked a Palm Beach County judge to hold Kraft attorneys Alex Spiro and William Burck in contempt for “knowingly and intentionally making a false statement of fact” while questioning a witness, who happens to be a cop who made traffic stops after customers left the spa. They were grilling him about a conversation supposedly picked up over a body cam.
The claim is that in questioning the cop the lawyers set up a false premise: that the officer had been recorded stating that if anyone questioned whether there was a proper justification for making a traffic stop, the cop could simply “make shit up.”
In fact, the officer is not recorded saying that.
In a response filed later Tuesday, the defense attorneys said they did nothing improper and that they were handcuffed by the state’s decision to delay providing them body-cam recordings, which made it difficult for them to frame their questions accurately.
The bid to have the lawyers cited for contempt comes as the state has its hands full defending the decision by investigators to place surveillance cameras inside the Orchids of Asia spa in Jupiter. The defense wants footage captured by the cameras excluded from trial, which might well gut the case against Kraft and others who were charged with soliciting sex.
Burck said the state was “sweating desperation” by filing the motion.
“They are trying to deflect from the unconstitutional and illegal acts of the police and the state attorney’s office in this case by making false and unethical claims against the lawyers,” Burck told the Herald Tuesday afternoon. “It demonstrates a degree of desperation that reveals that the state will go to any length to try to save its case.”
A judge has to rule on the matter.
In January, Kraft was charged with the misdemeanor counts as part of an investigation into Orchids of Asia. Kraft was one of dozens of men charged.
More than 100 hours of video surveillance — from both inside and outside the spa — were the subject of an April 29 court hearing in which a judge ruled the videos should remain sealed from public view for the time being. Whether they can be introduced as evidence at trial is a separate matter.
The videos are relevant to both the misdemeanor cases involving Kraft and others as well as the separate felony prosecution of spa owner Hua Zhang and therapist Lei Wang.
This story was originally published May 7, 2019 at 5:52 PM.
