Saturday, December 27, 2014

Like It Or Not: Accused Serial Sexual Predator's Constutional Right Were Knowingly and Willfully Violated

12/27/2014

Child molester stigma makes it the only crime to justify constitutional violations...

Serial child molester can't dodge 959-year prison term, Pa. court rules

It has been nearly two years since Walter Frank Meyerle was sentenced to up to 959 years in prison as a serial child molester.

This week, a panel of state Superior Court found no reason to cut him slack on even a single second of his jail time.

walter meyerleWalter Frank Meyerle 
It rejected Meyerle's appeal of the 479 1/2- to 959-year state prison term he received after being convicted of molesting 15 children, both boys and girls, over at least a 12-year period. His victims ranged in age from 4 to 17.


A Bucks County judge hit him with the massive prison sentence in January 2013 after convicting Meyerle of nearly 190 child molestation charges.
On appeal, Meyerle, now 38, claimed investigators seized some of the key evidence against him, including files from his laptop computer, by using search warrants that weren't valid. He contended that prosecutors should have been barred from using that evidence during his nonjury trial before county Judge Diane E. Gibbons.

Detectives seized Meyerle's computer and other evidence during a March 2011 search. Authorities secured a warrant to search Meyerle's Falls Township home after the mother of a 15-year-old victim reported that Meyerle had tattooed her daughter's pelvic area and was regularly engaging in sex acts with the girl.

The girl claimed, among other things, that she and another teen had engaged in phone sex with Meyerle dozens of times, police said in their application for the search warrant. Telephone records secured by court order confirmed that, investigators said in the warrant application.

Also, they cited a claim by the aunt of one of Meyerle's victims that she too had been molested by Meyerle 10 years earlier. Investigators pointed to molestation claims by several other victims as well, and noted that two of them corroborated that Meyerle had a dollar sign tattooed on his penis.

In his state court appeal, Meyerle contended that police should have known their affidavit for the search warrant contained some information he claimed was false or so old it was "stale." One victim's claim that he raped her in mid-2010 couldn't be true because he was in prison at the time, he argued.

State judge Paula Francisco Ott found no basis for any of Meyerle's challenges to the search warrants in her court's opinion on the case.

Another claim by Meyerle that his laptop computer was seized illegally because its serial number wasn't correctly listed on a search warrant, didn't gain traction with the state judges, either. Ott noted that the warrant specified only that a Toshiba laptop was to be seized and Meyerle had only one laptop of that make.

Therefore, the warrant was specific enough, she wrote.


source

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