NEW YORK
New York Post
By Josh Saul
October 24, 2014
A Hasidic Jewish man accused of taking photos of a sex-abuse victim as she testified in a blockbuster 2012 trial will have the case against him dismissed Friday, the Post has learned.
Yona Weissman, 24, was charged with contempt when court officers caught him with a photo on his phone of the pretty 17-year-old girl on the stand in the trial of her Hasidic counselor, Nechemya Weberman, who was later convicted of brutally abusing her. The photo had also been posted to Twitter.
But the case against Weissman took a hit when Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Michael Gerstein – citing a recent US Supreme Court decision – ruled the photos inadmissible as evidence because court officers failed to obey search-and-seizure laws.
“There’s no evidence anymore, so that’s it. You need the evidence to convict and without evidence there’s no case,” said Weissman defense attorney Izzy Fried, who said the prosecutor on the case called him Thursday to say the case would be dismissed in court Friday.
“He maintains his innocence. He didn’t do anything wrong. The fact that he had the image on his phone that they illegally searched doesn’t mean he snapped the picture.”
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