Date: March 8th, 2025 9:21 PM
Author: sooty glittery shrine pistol
judge gave him 18 months probation
ELKTON — A judge ordered a 63-year-old man to serve 18 months of supervised probation Wednesday after finding him guilty of disturbing school operation, a misdemeanor offense relating to him taking numerous inappropriate photos and videos of high school girls playing volleyball at Bohemia Manor High School near Chesapeake City in October.
Cecil County District Court Judge Clara E. Campbell imposed a six-month sentence on the defendant, Michael Cornell Griffin, of Townsend, Del., and then suspended the penalty.
In addition to placing Griffin on 18 months of supervised probation, the judge fined him $500 and banned him from entering the property of any school with students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Campbell also ordered Griffin to have no contact with the parents, students and school employees involved in the incident, which occurred shortly before 8 p.m. on Oct. 3 inside the Bo Manor gymnasium.
During the half-day-long bench trial, state testimony showed that Griffin took several zoomed-in photos and videos of the clothed buttocks and other private areas of female junior varsity and varsity players during volleyball matches between hosting Bohemia Manor High School and visiting Perryville High School squads.
Undisputed testimony indicated that shorts worn by girls on the high school volleyball teams typically are tight.
The defense argued that it was the girls’ parents and other spectators who caused the disturbance by how they reacted to the image-taking by Griffin. Griffin elected not to testify at trial, and the defense called no witnesses.
A mother of one of the players confronted Griffin in the bleachers and loudly and profanely asked him what he was doing, before alerting a nearby on-duty Maryland State Police trooper, who, in turn, launched an investigation in the gym’s adjacent lobby.
Griffin’s Bel Air-based lawyer, Douglas Dolan, argued that it is not against the law or school regulations to take photos and videos during high school sporting events, hence no signage forbidding the activity. Parents and other spectators also take photos during volleyball matches, he reviewed.
Dolan emphasized that, according to state testimony, Griffin was silent while taking the photos and videos and that he wasn’t making any gestures, offensive or otherwise.
“My client wasn’t doing anything to draw attention to himself,” Dolan told the judge, before further arguing that Griffin’s image taking is a form of speech that is constitutionally protected. “It cannot, in and of itself, cause a disturbance,” Dolan contended.
Referring to Griffin’s image taking, Dolan argued, “It may have been inappropriate. It may have been offensive. But it isn’t illegal.”
Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph M. Verratti, however, countered in his closing argument that the “conduct in question” is Griffin intentionally zooming in on the private parts of the female volleyball players — not him taking photos and videos of the sporting event.
“It ultimately led to them (parents) standing up and calling him out on it,” Verratti reminded the judge.
Campbell concurred with Verratti.
“What he’s doing is a legal action. But a legal action can still be disturbing. Riding a bicycle is legal, too, but riding a bicycle across a volleyball court during a game is disturbing,” Campbell explained from the bench.
The judge continued, “The disturbance is by what he (Griffin) is doing and people getting offended by it. It’s not her (the mother) yelling and it’s not the trooper taking him out (of the gymnasium).”
Campbell also remarked from the bench, “You can take a picture of a spike or a serve, but not a series of players’ private parts.”
The judge opined that Griffin was “surreptitiously” taking the zoomed-in images of the girls, recalling how a mother of a player testified that Griffin held his cell phone between his knees.
Dolan told the judge that Griffin did not have a child, grandchild or any other type relative playing in the volleyball matches.
The defense lawyer then explained that Griffin and his wife — who was seated next to him in the bleachers — were attending the volleyball competition with church friends, whose relative or relatives played on the high school squad or squads.
During the trial, Griffin’s wife was seated in the gallery, on the defense side of the courtroom.
Dolan reported that Griffin and his wife “go to church every Sunday” and that his client routinely “feeds the homeless” as a charity volunteer. The lawyer also told the judge that Dolan has four children.
In addition, Dolan reported that Griffin has a high-school education; that he made his living working in HVAC before retiring; and that he has undergone heart surgeries.
Asking the judge for leniency on behalf of his client, Dolan emphasized that Griffin has an otherwise clean criminal record.
The judge acknowledged Griffin’s otherwise unblemished record and commented from the bench, “This is one of the more difficult cases for that reason.”
At trial, Verratti called four state witnesses. The list includes two mothers of girls on the high school volleyball squads. They were among the parents who saw Griffin taking the images.
The prosecutor also called Maryland State Police Master Trooper Jason Proctor, who used his body-worn camera to record the questionable photos and videos on Griffin’s phone before deleting them — at the urging of the mother of one of the players and with Griffin’s permission. The body-worn video of those images were entered into evidence at trial.
Stacy Rahnama, who was the Bohemia Manor Middle School assistant principal then, also was called as a state witness. She was present in the lobby adjacent to the gym during the on-scene investigation.
One of the two mothers testified that she confronted Griffin after noticing him using his cell phone camera to deliberately zoom on the girls’ private areas, which she could see on the screen of his device from her bleachers seat behind him.
That woman found it odd that Griffin would be seated so close to the volleyball court’s net and to where the referee sits, opining that it was an obstructed view, according to her testimony.
“What the (expletive) are you doing?” the mother loudly asked Griffin, she testified.
After consulting other nearby parents and learning that they, too, had noticed Griffin’s questionable camera work, she alerted Proctor, who escorted Griffin from the gymnasium into the lobby.
Proctor informed Griffin that he had been accused of taking inappropriate photos of female volleyball players — an allegation that Griffin denied, the master trooper testified.
Griffin gave verbal consent when Proctor asked if he could look at the images on his cell phone, according to Proctor, who testified that he and Rahnama then saw numerous inappropriate photos and videos of female volleyball players on Griffin’s device.
“You could clearly see that he zoomed in on their buttocks area,” Proctor testified.
In the charging document, Proctor noted that Griffin’s zoomed-in images revealed “inappropriate detail, as certain curvature of the female players body parts could be clearly observed.”
Some spectators left the gym during the volleyball match and gathered to watch Proctor interacting with Griffin, according to Proctor. When the initial complainant came into the lobby and asked that any images of her daughter be erased, Proctor asked for Griffin’s permission to purge all of the questionable photos from his phone and he gave it, he reported.
They moved into the breezeway, where Proctor erased all of the questionable images from the photo library and the trash bin file on Griffin’s cell phone, he said. Rahnama was present when he eliminated the images, Proctor added.
After deleting the images, Proctor escorted Griffin to his 2014 Chrysler 200 that was parked in the school lot and ordered him to leave the premises, which Griffin did, court records show.
Griffin was not arrested but, instead, he was charged through a criminal summons that was issued on Oct. 7, four days after the incident, court records show. A disorderly conduct charge merged into the disturbing school operation conviction Wednesday during sentencing.
https://archive.fo/URcf8
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5690881&forum_id=2#48729204)