A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in favor of a Virginia man who, as a teen, was once ordered by a lower court to be photographed while masturbating in the presence of armed police officers.
That warrant was ostensibly part of an ongoing sexting investigation into the then-teen, Trey Sims, who had exchanged explicit messages with his then-15-year-old girlfriend. Her mother reported the incident to the Manassas City Police Department in January 2014.
Eventually, the detective assigned to the case, David Abbott,
obtained a signed warrant to take photographs of Sims' naked body—including "the suspect’s erect penis"—so that he could compare them to Sims' explicit messages.
When this bizarre effort was unsuccessfully attempted, Abbott then obtained a second warrant authorizing police to escort Sims to a hospital for an "erection-inducing injection." This injection
ultimately never took place after massive public outcry.
Abbott
committed suicide in December 2015 when officers came to arrest him on separate charges relating to pedophilia.
