Judge gets to naked truth behind Polaroid in parking lot

FROM POTHEADS to prostitutes to public urinators, they get it all in General District Court.

I highly recommend a few hours there, especially if you can no longer afford movie tickets. Shoot, sometimes there's even nudity.

Take Monday, for instance.

Judge W. Edward Hudgins Jr.'s eyebrows shot above his wire-rim glasses as he flipped through a stack of color photographs proffered by Officer P.D. Bradley during the Robert B. Lewis trial.

The Oceanfront exhibitionist was in court.

In November, in the Harris Teeter parking lot, I stumbled upon a Polaroid of a guy wearing nothing but a mustache.

"He might be some kind of pervert," I told the cops when I turned in the photo.

In the months that followed, I heard from other women. They, too, found full-frontals in the same lot. It's not the crime of the century. But it's the sort of creepy behavior you want to nip in the, well, butt.

In February, police arrested Lewis after Scott Kirkham saw him drop a photo on the pavement by the passenger door of Kirkham's parked car in the Harris Teeter lot. Kirkham's 14-year-old daughter had gotten out of that door earlier.

According to testimony, Lewis, 52, retrieved the revealing picture once he realized he'd been made.

"I asked him what he had," Kirkham told the court. "He said, 'You don't want to see.' "

Ah, but Kirkham very much wanted to see what was in Lewis' hand. He threatened to call the cops if Lewis didn't show it to him.

It was a picture of Lewis. In his birthday suit.

Soon, store managers, who had a collection of similar shots turned in by customers, arrived and so did the police. The officer testified that Lewis' speech was slurred and an open bottle of vodka was on the floor of his car. There were more pictures of him naked, too.

Lewis was charged with having an open container of alcohol, public intoxication and displaying obscene photos.

On Monday, the defendant arrived in court, clean-shaven and clothed. Sporting jeans and a hoodie, he pleaded guilty to the first two charges, not guilty to the third.

He was convicted of all three and sentenced to 90 days in jail, which were suspended on condition he behave himself for two years. The judge noted that Lewis has eight or nine alcohol-related offenses and ordered him to complete a substance-abuse evaluation.

Handing the photos back to the officer, the judge stared at the defendant.

"Mr. Lewis, I don't know why you're running around with photos of yourself with no clothes on," he said.

Ask him, I whispered.

The judge didn't. So I did.

I found Lewis in a hallway, where I introduced myself and told him I'd found one of those photos last fall. I figured that made us buds.

Apparently not.

"I don't want to talk to you," he said.

Pity. I wanted to mention that if that was him I found in the parking lot, he looked better without a mustache. And with his pants on.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net