Sean Harrington’s plea deal, which was finalized on Tuesday, means that he receives a 180-day suspended sentence, three years of felony probation, and according to local media accounts, “must also speak at a community violence solutions class to tell everyone what he did.” Harrington resigned from the CHP last year after the charges were filed.
The case emerged last year from a woman, referred to in court documents as “Jane Doe #1,” who came forward to local authorities in early October 2014 after being briefly arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol in late August 2014 in San Ramon, California, about 35 miles east of San Francisco.
"I apologize to my family, my wife, my friends. I apologize to officers everywhere, especially to the two women involved," Harrington said, reading from a statement outside court in Martinez, according to the Bay Area News Group. "I'm trying to put this behind me and move forward from this. I hope now everyone else can, too."
Neither the CHP, nor Doe’s lawyer, Rick Madsen, immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment.
UPDATE Wednesday 7:44am CT: CHP Officer Daniel Hill, a spokesman for the agency, wrote to Ars late Tuesday evening: "The CHP has no comments or positions regarding the disposition of Mr. Harrington’s case, as he is no longer a member of our Department."
Doe, who handed over her iPhone and gave the password to it when one of the officers requested it, later discovered that this same officer sent photos of her topless and in her underwear from her phone to his own. Investigators also discovered a similar incident involving a "Jane Doe #2," who was pulled over in Livermore in early August 2014.
In October 2014, Harrington was formally charged with two counts of "theft and copying of computer data," a felony. Doe's arrest came just two months after the unanimous Supreme Court decision, Riley v. California, which found that law enforcement cannot search or seize an arrested person's phone without a warrant. All charges against Does #1 and #2 were dropped.
Nude selfies on the loose
As Ars reported in October 2014, according to the warrants received from an anonymous source, the story begins in the early hours of August 29, 2014. That was when Harrington, along with his partner, Officer Pope, pulled over a woman (Jane Doe #1) for an unsafe lane change southbound on Interstate 680 near Crow Canyon Road, and gave her a breathalyzer test for driving under the influence of alcohol. Her blood alcohol level was measured at 0.29 percent—far more than the 0.08 percent that California law allows.At some point during the traffic stop, one of the officers asked for her phone, which she provided. Then, Harrington asked for her password, which she also provided.
Doe was arrested and booked at the Martinez Detention Facility, in the far north of the county, and then released a few hours later.
Five days later, according to the warrant, Doe looked at her iPad at home and saw that on the Messages app, six photographs had been sent via iMessage to a 707 area code phone number that she did not recognize.
The photos showed her in “various stages of undress” and included topless shots and others in which she wore a bikini or underwear. Two of the photos included a “female friend” engaged in similar poses.
Doe told investigators that she “did not give permission to anyone at telephone number [REDACTED] to have those photographs. Jane Doe said she looked at her iPhone and did not see the messages.”
Then, she searched for this 707 phone number online and found that it was associated with Harrington, who she remembered was the CHP officer who arrested her.
Jane Doe said she "never gave Harrington permission to access the photos in her phone and never gave him permission to send nude photographs of herself to his phone,” the warrant of Harrington’s home continues. “Jane Doe said she and Officer Harrington have not spoken to each other since the arrest on August 29, although Jane Doe said she called the phone number but no one answered. Doe said she did not know Officer Harrington before that date.”
In a statement released to the public on October 31, 2014, Contra Costa District Attorney Mark Peterson said that this was the "first time in the county's history that his office has charged an officer with a crime of this nature."
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