Judge Blasts CBS, Secret Service Over Home Search : Television: ‘You cannot, in search of news and profit, break into people’s houses this way,’ says federal jurist.

A federal judge here on Monday blasted the conduct of the U.S. Secret Service and a CBS news crew involved in searching the home of a man indicted for credit-card fraud, not only ordering that the network’s videotape be turned over as evidence but also predicting that it would lead to the defendant being acquitted.

“You cannot, in search of news and profit, break into people’s houses this way. It is simply intolerable,” U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein said after reviewing the tape over the weekend.

A camera crew from CBS’ prime-time series “Street Stories” had accompanied Secret Service agents as they searched the apartment of the defendant, Babatunde Ayeni, last March. His lawyers had subpoenaed the tape as evidence in the trial, and the network turned it over to the judge last week after he rejected arguments that it was protected by the First Amendment.

CBS had contended that it had a journalistic privilege under the First Amendment to be present during the search of the apartment, for which a government search warrant had been issued. The network also argued that it had implicit permission from the defendant’s wife, who was there with her 5-year-old child, because the woman did not ask the CBS crew to leave. Weinstein held that the network did not have a right to be there because CBS was acting with the government, not independently of it.

After watching the tape, Weinstein ruled Monday that “it’s highly relevant to the case because it shows in great detail how thorough the search was and that not one scrap of evidence against the defendant was elicited. Moreover, the nature of the search and the presence of the TV in these people’s homes, the intrusion, the ransacking of the house, the attempts of the wife to shield her face and child, all make the evidence so powerful that unless the government has extremely strong evidence against this defendant, (the CBS videotape) will result in acquittal.”

Ayeni has pleaded not guilty.

Reviewing the videotape, which CBS said it had not aired, Weinstein said that CBS had entered the home “without the consent of defendant or his family. . . . CBS’ argument that she impliedly consented to the crew’s presence by failing to ask it to leave is fanciful.”

The defendant’s wife, Weinstein said, not only asked the crew not to take her picture but also apparently assumed that the TV crew was part of the Secret Service investigation.

CBS News and a spokeswoman for the New York field office of the Secret Service declined to comment Monday.

CBS News has five days in which to appeal Weinstein’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The trial, which had been scheduled to begin next week, has been postponed.