Let no one come between Dennis Saunders and his porn.
Saunders, who recently completed a jail term for secretly videotaping a woman and a teenage girl in San Rafael, asked police to return the massive porn collection they had seized during the investigation. The collection, including some 500 movies and 250 magazines, was not relevant to the criminal case and is otherwise legal material, said Saunders’ attorney, Jon Rankin of Tiburon.
But San Rafael police declined to give the porn back to Saunders, who has history of peeping-relating arrests dating to 1979. So Saunders has filed a lawsuit against the San Rafael Police Department and the city of San Rafael, demanding the return of his library.
“There’s absolutely no legal foundation for them withholding perfectly legal adult-oriented material,” Rankin said. “No one had shown me a shred of legal authority that has shown the government can hold on to that stuff.”
Thomas Bertrand, an attorney representing San Rafael, said the city merely wants a judge’s direction on whether it would be “lawful or appropriate” to return the material to Saunders.
“If the court orders us to give it back to him, we will give it back to him,” Bertrand said.
The suit is being heard by Judge