Cheerleader's mom urges Third Circuit to make police pay for faulty case of underage deepfakes

PHILADELPHIA (CN) — A cheer mom who was internationally vilified after authorities accused her of harassing minors with deepfaked images of themselves wants officials to pay after they acknowledged they had insufficient evidence to charge her.

Police arrested Doylestown, Pennsylvania, resident Rafaella Spone in December 2020 after multiple teenage cheerleaders reported they had been sent deepfaked images of themselves edited to appear as though they were drinking alcohol, smoking cannabis, vaping or nude.

Following Spone’s arrest, then-Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub held a news conference in which he told journalists that Spone had sent the messages to the teenage cheerleaders, their parents and their cheer coaches in a smear campaign. Her goal, Weintraub said, was to eliminate competition for her daughter, who practiced cheer with the girls. Spone was charged on six counts — three cyberharassment charges stemming from contact with the teenage girls, and three harassment charges pertaining to contact with their parents and cheer coaches.

Following the press conference, the story spread across the globe, from the Daily Show to the BBC and Hindustan Times. Weintraub even called into a Good Morning America segment on the arrest.

The problem? Hilltown police had relied on an eye test to determine whether the images were deepfaked. Lacking sufficient evidence, authorities dropped Spone’s cyberharassment charges on the first day of trial as well as any allegations of digitally manipulated media. Spone was eventually found guilty on three counts of misdemeanor harassment and sentenced to three years’ probation.

Still affected by the officers’ since-rescinded deepfake claims, Spone countered with a federal lawsuit.

Weintraub, Hilltown Detective Louis Bell and former Hilltown police officer Matthew Reiss faced claims of fabricating evidence, and Weintraub and Reiss also faced federal defamation claims in violation of Spone’s 14th Amendment rights. Hilltown Township and Bucks County saw a municipal liability claim and all defendants — including a cheerleader and her mother — were hit with state law defamation claims.

But this past March, U.S. District Court Judge Kai N. Scott, a Joe Biden appointee, dismissed all of Spone’s claims. Scott found Spone’s fabricated evidence claims were barred by her misdemeanor harassment conviction.

Regarding her federal defamation claims, Scott found Spone failed to show reputational harm and another deprivation of her rights. And because both her fabricated evidence and federal defamation claims failed, neither Spone’s municipal liability claim nor her state law claims could proceed.

Spone appealed.

Representing Spone in the Third Circuit, attorney Shawn M. Rodgers refuted Scott’s finding that his client’s fabricated evidence claim is barred and suggested that the harassment and cyberharassment charges remain “entirely different and distinct.”

“They have different factual predicates,” Rodgers told the three-judge panel. “They have different elements that are required. And the district court, in its opinion, basically used the conviction in the one case to entirely bar my client’s claim based on evidence that was solely reflected in the cyberharassment charges.”

Representing Hilltown Township and Hilltown Detective Louis Bell, attorney David MacMain said enough elements overlapped between the two sets of charges for the Heck doctrine — which bars people convicted of crimes from filing lawsuits that imply their convictions are invalid — to apply.

Almost immediately, U.S. Circuit Judge Arianna Freeman questioned whether the Heck doctrine could apply to two distinct charges, hypothesizing about an individual charged with both shoplifting and murder.

“Somehow the murder charge goes away but they get convicted of shoplifting, and later they find out there was fabricated evidence supporting the murder charge,” Freeman, a Joe Biden appointee, said. “Because they were convicted of shoplifting, they can’t challenge the murder?”

MacMain distanced Spone’s case from Freeman’s hypothetical by noting a clearer overlap between the dropped cyberharassment charges and general harassment conviction.

While U.S. Circuit Judge Peter J. Phipps, a Donald Trump appointee, agreed with MacMain’s presumption, the conversation quickly opened a new question that could be paramount to Spone’s appeal — just how much overlap is enough for a fabricated evidence charge to be barred by Heck?

“I think you have to say, in order to win on this point, that some degree of elemental overlap is good enough,” Phipps told MacMain. “The question is, how much? Is it one? Is it two? Are we supposed to do some sort of substantial weighing of the cases and say, ‘Of the elements, gosh, these are really close’?’

While MacMain reiterated that a complete overlap would not be necessary for Heck to apply, neither he nor the other attorneys would answer Phipps’ question during the hearing.

Phipps’ concerns over Spone’s fabricated evidence claims weren’t limited to comparisons of her two sets of charges, however. Questioning whether the witnesses’ statements claiming they had received deepfakes should be understood as fabricated by police or as lies taken as fact, Phipps pushed Rodgers to clarify what actually had been fabricated.

“I hear fabricated evidence, I want to see something that was truly manufactured by the prosecution team — not that came from external sources and was wrongfully believed or given too much weight,” Phipps said.

Rodgers conceded that the prosecutors’ misconduct did not appear intentional. Still, he asserted that their failure to sufficiently investigate the cyberharassment accusations falls under reckless disregard, which would still constitute grounds for a fabricated evidence claim.

“If somebody says to the police that there is a deepfake out there and that it was on a device, and they don’t confiscate the device and do any work to investigate it all, and arrest somebody based on (witnesses’ claims alone), that’s arguably reckless regard,” he said.

Phipps appeared to disagree, suggesting that challenging the arrest warrant’s validity likely would have been more fitting.

As for Spone’s federal defamation claims against Reiss and Weintraub, the judge’s panel expressed skepticism that Spone’s arrest and prosecution meet the necessary criteria of injury under the law.

“I think that’s really tough,” Phipps told Rodgers.

Meanwhile, Reiss’ attorney Joshua Brownlie suggested giving Spone leave to amend her defamation claims to rely on the Fourth Amendment rather than the 14th Amendment would be a step too far.

“What she’s seeking to do now is to completely change the cause of action,” Brownlie said. “That’s not amendment. That’s re-pleading.”

During Rodgers’ rebuttal, Phipps questioned Rodgers on similar grounds.

“That struck me as, you know, a really big amendment,” Phipps said.

“It is a big amendment, no question,” Rodgers replied, before reasserting that a 14th Amendment due process violation had occurred as a result of prosecutors’ false statements.

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