A Florida court technician has the job of blurring Justin Bieber's private parts on jail video before you can see it.
The video will then
be handed over to news organizations this week under Florida's open records
law, a Miami judge ordered Tuesday.
It's part of several
hours of video captured by surveillance cameras inside the Miami Beach Police
Department's jail, where Bieber was held after his arrest on DUI charges
on January 23.
Miami-Dade County
Judge William Altfield rejected arguments from Bieber's lawyer that the video
should be kept private.
"The court finds
that images of the defendant while in custody at the Miami Beach Police
Department are relevant to the public's right to know," Altfield ruled
Tuesday.
The segments to be
released include a sequence in which Bieber "appears to be urinating"
in a cell, "revealing an image of the defendant's genitalia," the
judge wrote.
The order, however,
instructs the court's video technician to blur "the image wherein
genitalia is observed."
"While the
defendant may not enjoy all of the expectations of privacy that he enjoys
outside of a jail setting, he still retains his expectation of dignity,"
the judge said.
Several photographs
taken by police of Bieber showing his tattoos were given to the media Tuesday.
Video showing Bieber
doing push-ups in a jail cell and attempting a sobriety test in a hallway were
released last month.
Florida's open
records law gives the news media full access to documents, photographs and
video collected by police unless there is a compelling reason to keep them
private.
A status hearing is
set for March 11 in Bieber's DUI case, which also includes a charge of
resisting arrest without violence and driving with an expired license.
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