Lawyer Accused of Secretly Filming Colleagues

It looked like an ordinary digital alarm clock, high tech in a stylish way, with a brushed silver finish.

But it turned out to be a Sharper Image “security camcorder,” which prosecutors say was used to take pictures of female Legal Aid lawyers dressing in their offices at 49 Thomas Street in Downtown Manhattan.

After the surveillance was discovered, Legal Aid officials, putting aside their usual rivalry, went to the Manhattan district attorney’s office for help. A sting operation led to the arrest of a promising junior lawyer, Peter A. Barta, on charges of secretly filming two female colleagues and trying to film three more.

At his arraignment yesterday, Mr. Barta, 32, a graduate of Georgetown Law School and Stuyvesant High School, where he was a star debater, found himself standing as a defendant in front of a judge he had stood before as a public defender in the not-so-distant past.

“Mr. Barta, you’ve been in front of me when I was in Criminal Court,” Justice Laura A. Ward of State Supreme Court in Manhattan said, not unkindly, looking down from the bench at the defendant. He was holding a rolled-up copy of The New Yorker, which he had been reading while waiting for his case to be called.

Justice Ward gave Mr. Barta a chance to ask for a different judge, which he declined. She was unable to suppress a small smile as she added, “Stop me if you have any questions about anything I say or ask.”

Mr. Barta pleaded not guilty to felony charges of unlawful surveillance. If convicted, he would face automatic disbarment and as much as four years in prison. Even if he is acquitted, he could face professional disciplinary action, his lawyer, Henry Putzel, said yesterday.

Mr. Barta declined to comment, but his lawyer said he was “distraught.”

Steven Banks, attorney in chief for Legal Aid, said yesterday, “We take this matter seriously and do not tolerate such conduct.”

Legal Aid lawyers said that Mr. Barta had taken advantage of their habit of wearing casual clothes at the Legal Aid offices during long hours of paperwork, then closing the doors to their private offices and changing into dressier outfits for court appearances. Prosecutors said that in October 2006, one lawyer saw the silver clock in a colleague’s office and remembered having seen it in her own office a few months before.

Examining it more closely, she realized that it was a camera, according to the complaint against Mr. Barta. Investigators confiscated the original clock and replaced it with a duplicate. A separate surveillance camera then captured Mr. Barta removing the duplicate clock, and a search of his home uncovered a tape of one of the women in a state of undress, the complaint said.

Mr. Barta is accused of making the recordings from May 2004 to June 2006. Jessica Lynn, the prosecutor in the case, said Mr. Barta had been charged “under two separate theories”: that he took the pictures for “amusement and entertainment,” and that he did it for “his own sexual arousal.”

Mr. Barta worked for Legal Aid from June 18, 2001, until Nov. 2, 2006, when he was forced to resign after the investigation, Legal Aid officials said. He has been working at a temporary employment agency for lawyers since then, his lawyer said.

The Sharper Image clock is marketed as a security camera, something parents could use to spy on nannies. The company Web site says it “lets you see ‘What Really Happened While You Were Away!’ ”

Justice Ward released Mr. Barta without bail and told him to return to court on Aug. 23.