Appeals court reinstates ‘Peeping Tom’ case against man accused of spying on five Pembroke Pines women

A Miami-Dade man whose “Peeping Tom” case was dismissed two years ago because a crucial state witness was unavailable for pre-trial questioning got some bad news from an appeals court this week.

State v. Pelayo Alexander Cerulia will be back on the docket, the Fourth District Court of Appeal ordered. The decision gives prosecutors another chance to bring Cerulia, 52, in front of a jury on accusations that he terrorized at least five Pembroke Pines women over a two-year period ending in his arrest on the last day of 2015.

Broward Circuit Judge Andrew Siegel ordered the case dismissed in July 2022 after determining that prosecutors weren’t doing enough to help the defense locate and interview Pembroke Pines Police Detective Peter Sandor, the lead investigator on the case.

The problem began when Sandor left his job and moved out of state. Sandor later called Broward prosecutors and told them he was being pestered by defense lawyers wanting him to sit down for a deposition after he had already completed one.

The Broward State Attorney’s Office initially told him that he did not need to worry about defense efforts to reach him.

This week, the Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed Siegel’s decision and put the case back on the calendar. The appeals court ruled that dismissing the case should have been a “last resort” instead of a punitive action against the state.

“This action punishes the public, not the state,” the appeals court wrote, citing a similar 2022 case involving an unavailable witness.

The state in the Cerulia case made multiple attempts to make the former detective available after Judge Siegel ordered them to do so, the appeals court found.

“The record is clear that both defense counsel and the State struggled to maintain contact with the Detective,” the appeals court wrote.

One woman told investigators that Cerulia tried to break into her home on July 18, 2015, urging her to show him her breasts and bragging that he would never be caught.

Cerulia turned himself in after five women publicly shared frightening accounts of repeated encounters with a man who peered into their windows and masturbated, shattered windows with marbles slung from a slingshot, and, in the July 18 incident, struggled to push a window open to get inside.

Efforts to reach defense lawyer Robert Pelier were unsuccessful this week. No updated information was available on the case on the Clerk of Courts’ website Friday.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.