WILLARD

Although he pleaded no contest to similar charges in Portage County, Jamie Aguirre pleaded not guilty this week to dozens of sexual crimes in Seneca County.

Aguirre, 43, an ultrasound technician from Willard, was arraigned in Seneca County court on 59 counts of voyeurism and 13 counts of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material.

His pretrial is set for March 10.

Aguirre’s not-guilty plea was standard procedure.

But a plea he made a few weeks ago in Portage County was a calculated legal move, said Portage County chief public defender Dennis Lager, who represented Aguirre.

Aguirre’s no-contest plea to 11 charges of possessing nudity-oriented material involving minors and four misdemeanor counts of drug abuse allows him to appeal the trial court’s decision to deny his motion to suppress the evidence in the case.

If his appeal won and an appellate judge reversed the trial court’s decision to deny the suppression motion, it could clear Aguirre on the Portage County charges and have implications for his case in Seneca County.

Potentially, it could wipe out authorities’ justification to obtain and execute a search warrant on Aguirre’s home, officials said.

That could make the key evidence in the case inadmissible.

Lager said the original police investigation into his client was illegal.

He claimed the officers who discovered 200 images and videos featuring nude children and adults in Aguirre’s possession had no probable cause to search his client’s memory cards.

Officials say Aguirre, who worked for Advanced Medical Imaging in Tiffin, snapped the photos secretly using a wireless camera.

Police pulled Aguirre over for a traffic violation; Lager said they should have let Aguirre go free after finishing the traffic stop.

Instead, Lager said, they interrogated his client and then searched his digital data devices.

This discovery led to a search warrant for his home.

Police said they found on his hard drive thousands of photos and video of young girls undressing, adult females undressing, X-rays of their pubic areas and pictures of sedated patients in the nude.

“There have been 72 people who have been identified as victims of  what happened here in Seneca County,” prosecutor Derek DeVine said.

DeVine said they identified 13 girls and 59 women. They were patients at Advanced Medical Imaging.

Jonathan Stotze, Aguirre’s attorney in Seneca County, declined to comment.