The owner of a local tanning salon, accused of spying on a customer, won a fight on Monday to keep prosecutors from changing his sentence in a previous sexual misconduct case.
Mark Vandal Gilbert, 39, recently was accused of watching a tanning customer without her consent, but the January case was dismissed last month in Hamilton County Sessions Court when the alleged victim failed to show up in court.
On Monday, prosecutor Brian Finlay still tried to convince Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Rebecca Stern that the January charge, along with testimony from another woman alleging a similar incident in April 2009, was enough to revoke the judicial diversion that Mr. Gilbert received in a 2006 case.
Judicial diversion typically involves no jail time and allows the crime to be expunged from the public record once the defendant completes probation. Prosecutors argued that Mr. Gilbert’s actions in the newest charge were a violation of his probation.
In the 2006 case, the complaint stated Mr. Gilbert applied spray tan to the buttocks of a 19-year-old female, then licked her without consent.