Former Palmetto teacher to stand trial again on child porn charge after mistrial declared
A former Lincoln Memorial Middle School teacher will stand trial again after a jury on Friday couldn’t reach a unanimous decision on one of the child porn charges he faced for photos of a topless 16-year-old found on his laptop.
Following more than seven hours of deliberation, the jury of five women and one man found Quentin Peterson not guilty of a second child porn charge for the photo found of the topless girl alone posing suggestively.
Circuit Judge Lon Arend was forced to declare a mistrial on the first count that involved a photo of the same topless girl in bed lying on top of a man. The count is now scheduled to be re-tried in September.
“He’s always stated that he was not guilty,” his defense attorney Daviana M. Braniff said outside the Manatee courthouse beside Peterson on Friday evening. “The jury got it correct on count two and we hope the State Attorney’s Office does the right thing and drops count one.”
Peterson, 28, was removed from the school in April 2017 when allegations came to light that he was having an inappropriate relationship with a student. Those allegations led Palmetto police to seize his laptop and two cellphones — on which a photo of the topless teen in a suggestive pose and a photo of Peterson with the girl in bed, naked from the waist up and a sheet covering them, were found.
Peterson was working at Booker High School in Sarasota when he was arrested a year later in April 2018.
Facing termination, Peterson had resigned from the Manatee County School District on Sept. 1, 2017. Lying on his application about that departure, Peterson then applied to be a substitute with the Sarasota County School District. Four months later, he took a permanent job as a math teacher at Booker, again failing to disclose he resigned while under criminal investigation.
Peterson took the stand in his own defense on Thursday, claiming on the witness stand that it was not him in the photo with the 16-year-old girl.
“The person is larger. The hairline,” Peterson said as he paused and pointed at a copy of the photo being shown to him at the witness stand. “Something going on here. Yeah that’s not me.”
Peterson detailed how he came to know her, having taught one of her younger sisters and working with their mother at Lincoln. He became friends with the mother and her husband, spending time with them, including at their home.
The then-16-year-old girl must have uploaded the photos to his laptop, he insisted. Peterson said that he had been helping her write a paper and had given her the password to his laptop before leaving the house to go out with her dad.
But the criminal analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who performed a digital forensic examination of Peterson’s phones and laptop testified that he found thumbnail and preview files from Keepsafe — an application that allows users to hide photos in a secret folder that is encrypted.
Peterson insisted he never had that application on his phone.
“Outside of my attorney telling me that some pictures may have come from Keepsafe, I have never heard of Keepsafe,” he added.
When Assistant State Attorney Justin Foster pressed him on how the girl could have gained access to his phone, Peterson said he would leave his phone lying around their house, alongside her parents’ phones, when spending time there.
“It just so happens that my password to my iPhone is the same as my laptop,” he then added.
The girl’s mother took the stand earlier Thursday as part of the state’s case against Peterson. Shown the photos Peterson was charged with, along with others admitted as evidence, the mother confirmed it was her daughter and Peterson in all of the photos.
As she looked at the picture of the girl on top of Peterson, the mother added, “That’s her room, her bedroom.These pictures are on her wall, and that’s her and her best friend.”
But the girl in the photos, now 21, also took the stand on Thursday, called by the defense. She claimed that she had uploaded the photos in question to Peterson’s laptop because she had a crush on him and was trying to gain his interest. When shown the photos, however, she said that wasn’t Peterson in bed with her.
“That is somebody I met,” she said. “Ryan, I don’t know their last name.”
The prosecutor questioned why she would upload a photo of her and someone else if she was trying to win Peterson’s interest.
“I choose the person on purpose,” she said, explaining that she picked someone who looked like Peterson in order to simulate for him what they would look like together.
Foster then questioned her about her previous testimony in a deposition in the case, in which she said that she had doctored the photos. She maintained that was still true on Thursday, saying that she edited the photos to make it look more like Peterson.
The alleged victim also claimed to be familiar with the application Keepsafe and to have used it before.
When questioned about his laptop browser history that showed articles found about deleting Snapchat or whether Snapchat images get handed over to law enforcement, Peterson claimed he must have landed on them when he followed links while researching
“I do think the government is spying and I was just looking up other things,” Peterson said. “I have never seen that article before.”
Peterson is no longer certified to teach in Florida. The Education Practices Commission permanently revoked his teaching certificate in April 2020 following the recommendation from a judge from the Division of Administrative Hearings.
This story was originally published July 23, 2021 at 7:32 PM.
