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Ex-Legal Aid Lawyer Arrested for Videotaping Female Colleagues
New York Law Journal
July 09, 2007
A six-year veteran of the Legal Aid Society was arraigned Friday on charges of spying on his female co-workers to capture them undressing. According to a 10-count information, Peter Barta, 32, spied on his co-workers on five occasions over 29 months and in one instance captured a female attorney partially undressed.
After pleading not guilty before Acting Justice Laura E. Drager, Barta was released on his own recognizance with the consent of the prosecution. Barta's lawyer, Henry Putzel III, said Barta had entered a not guilty plea "at this point" and called the situation "tragic."
As detailed in court documents, suspicions were raised when a female attorney discovered in October 2006 a Sharper Image alarm clock in her office containing a hidden motion-activated video camera. Three other female attorneys subsequently reported recalling that they had seen the same clock in their offices at 49 Thomas Street, headquarters for Legal Aid's criminal defense operation in Manhattan.
The lawyer who discovered the hidden camcorder advised her superiors, who placed her office under surveillance, and, according to court documents, recorded Barta retrieving the device from the office.
An investigator from the district attorney's office subsequently executed a search warrant at Barta's home where a VHS tape was recovered. It contained images of a fifth woman attorney in her office with her breasts and buttocks exposed. The camcorder's memory card contained only the image of the attorney who had discovered the device as she walked around her office clothed. No images of the other three woman lawyers who recalled seeing the device were found on the memory card.
Barta resigned from the Legal Aid Society on Nov. 3, 2006, in lieu of being fired, after Legal Aid had conducted an internal investigation, said Steven Banks, the society's attorney-in-chief.
The most serious charge Barta faces, second-degree unlawful surveillance, carries a maximum sentence of 1 1/3 years to 4 years in prison.
