Lawyers spar: Did video on ex-JSO officer's phone show casework or sexual interest in kids?

Lawyers preparing for the underage-sex trial of a former Jacksonville sheriff’s officer are squaring off over prosecution plans to describe the lawman as having a “sexual interest in children.”

Josue Garriga III was indicted in April on a federal charge that he enticed a 17-year-old girl he knew from church into “unlawful sexual activity.” A conviction carries a minimum 10-year prison sentence.

While sex is at the core of the case, Garriga’s attorneys are challenging a notice a prosecutor filed this month that she plans to bolster the case against him with “evidence of other acts committed by defendant, including evidence of defendant’s consumption of sexually suggestive media depicting female children.”

The evidence mentioned by Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Cofer Taylor comes from a cellphone Garriga used for his JSO duties, which the prosecutor wrote “contains thousands of artifacts reflecting that [the] defendant used the phone to view a slew of videos on social media of young girls, who appear by their physical features to be children. Hundreds of these artifacts depict the children wearing revealing clothing (for example, gymnastic leotards, low-cut and/or midriff baring and/or tight-fitting tops, and/or tight-fitting or otherwise revealing shorts/pants)…”

Commentary: Nate Monroe: Arrest of JSO officer should humble strident Jacksonville sheriff

The ex-cop’s lawyer answered that the evidence the prosecution is talking about is simply irrelevant and shouldn’t be allowed in Garriga’s trial.

“Respectfully, the government is seeking to prove an entirely different case than the one charged,” defense attorney M. Alan Ceballos argued in a filing last week to U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard.

He pointed out that precedents the prosecutor cited to justify presenting information about Garriga’s media habits came from cases about watching or sharing child pornography, not actually having sex with a minor.

And Ceballos said Garriga “was a long-time law enforcement officer, assigned to a wide variety of criminal cases, and that is why his ‘work cell phone’ has a large number of images.” The government “does not claim (nor can it) the ‘artifacts’ they seek to introduce were not obtained as part of his official law enforcement duties,” the attorney added.

But Taylor told the judge that the evidence she planned to present — under court rules covering “other crimes, wrongs or acts” than a defendant is charged with — showed something important about Garriga’s frame of mind.

“Evidence that the defendant consumed large amounts of social media reflecting his sexual interest in female children shows his intent, motive, and lack of mistake in sexually targeting the victim in this case,” Taylor argued in her notice.

“This evidence is especially probative in the circumstances of this case, where defendant successfully erased the bulk of the forensic evidence against him,” she added.

Court documents said Garriga, 34, at one point communicated with the teenager over WhatsApp, which can be set to automatically delete messages after 24 hours.

A separate state-level felony prosecution is scheduled to happen in the Clay County Courthouse.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Did video on ex-JSO officer's phone show 'sexual interest in children'?