Facts:
My clients work in the service industry and decided to go to Pass-a-Grill Beach after their shift around 10:30 pm. It was dark out and they got the idea to go skinny dipping. They thought they were alone. One thing led to another and…the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office showed up.
When the police arrived, they were sitting on the beach. The man was nude and the woman was covered in a towel. As I said, it was dark out, but a passerby had called the police to report that the couple were having sex. It was not witnessed by the police, but they were both arrested. The charge for each was disorderly conduct. They were taken to the Pinellas County jail and each had to be bonded out after several hours.
The Case:
I was retained by them both and went to work. Since the alleged sex was not witnessed by the police and the witness was anonymous, I wondered what proof of disorderly conduct there was. It was dark out, so there was no way that their nudity could have affected anyone. The only way that the police knew that they were nude was by shining their flashlights on them. I presented this argument to the prosecutor and pointed out that they had not been in trouble before.
The Result:
The prosecutor agreed not to pursue the charges. Both disorderly conduct charges were dropped and their records will remain clean.
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