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Regardless of which version is closer to the truth, the encounter resulted in only a misdemeanor citation that afternoon. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t be newsworthy, but the incident spiraled into a bizarre legal and personality showdown, at times rivaling Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump for the most overheated feud spun out of virtually nothing. The attorney told implausible tales of a vengeful homeless man stalking him through Nashville, while the alleged aggressor suggested his accuser just might be a pawn in a large-scale effort to push the poor out of downtown.
For years defense attorney Tommy Longaberger lived at The Cumberland, an upscale condominium complex at 555 Church Street. Just across the street from this sleek 24-story high-rise, and clearly visible from Longaberger’s third-story window, sits a small swath of green space the homeless frequent.
It was at this park on the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 24, 2004, that Steve Reiter, a 52-year-old homeless man, says he first met Longaberger.
Sitting by the fountain in the center of the park and sipping a cup of black coffee, Reiter says he looked up and saw “some guy lurking around the bushes taking pictures of me.” Understandably curious, Reiter approached the man to ask what he was doing. “I tapped him on the shoulder and he flipped out,” Reiter tells the Scene, saying he initially thought the man was homeless too. He jokes, “There are some of us who are crazy.”
The man with the camera was Longaberger, a DUI defense lawyer who maintains he was simply out taking pictures of the vibrant fall foliage. But a few snapshots introduced as evidence at trial—including a close-up of Reiter—clearly reveal he also was photographing the homeless.
And although Longaberger insists he wasn’t intentionally taking pictures of people that day, he admits that he frequently photographed and even videotaped the homeless from inside his condo. When asked why, he sounds like a sociologist, painting a sordid picture of fights and sex and drugs in the park below. In fact, he found the lives of the homeless in the park so fascinating that he even pitched it as a reality show to a Hollywood friend, but not surprisingly the proposal fell flat.
On the afternoon he ventured into the park with a camera, Longaberger claims Reiter came toward him “in a rage with fire in his eyes,” and that he shoved him three times. After the first push, Longaberger says he warned his assailant not to touch him again. Then he claims Reiter shoved him a second time while screaming out to those in the park, “Does anybody know this man?” Longaberger says that after being pushed a third time, he called 911.
“I was scared,” Longaberger tells the Scene, describing a scene reminiscent of Night of the Living Dead. “He was trying to incite the rest of the people in the park. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes.”
That’s when the attorney reached for his cell phone and called police. An officer responded and, after briefly speaking with Longaberger, cited Reiter for simple assault.
Although Reiter denies he did anything wrong, he called Longaberger a few days after the incident to clear up the misunderstanding. As soon as the lawyer realized who was on the line, Reiter claims he said, “See you in court,” then slammed down the phone.
Longaberger refused to drop the assault charge, but within a few months the District Attorney’s Office retired the case, a common course of action for nonviolent misdemeanors. This meant the case basically was in a holding pattern on the condition that Reiter stay away from Longaberger.
Both parties give starkly different accounts of what happened next.
In the spring of 2005, after the case had been retired, Longaberger says he looked out his window and saw Reiter staging a “protest” in the park. When asked to elaborate, the lawyer explains that all he saw was Reiter having an animated conversation with two or three other homeless people, none of whom were carrying signs. The meekest protest ever perhaps. Nevertheless, Longaberger called police, who arrived at the park and left a short time later without making any arrests.
“The protest to me was the first instance of stalking,” says Longaberger, who contacted the DA’s Office out of concern for his safety, but was told there was nothing illegal about congregating in a public place. Longaberger also claimed that Reiter persuaded his homeless cohorts to harass him and ultimately drive him out of downtown. He tells tales of poor people accosting him on the street calling him “lawyer boy” and “homeless hater.”
In the months following, the attorney repeatedly spotted Reiter hanging around the courthouse, and he says the encounters weren’t coincidental. He pleaded with prosecutors to reinstate the assault case and add a stalking charge, but they reminded him that, like the park, the courthouse is open to everyone, including a homeless man like Reiter.
Because his accuser was a lawyer, Reiter became versed in court procedures, studying at law libraries and observing trials at the courthouse. Reiter, a college graduate, figured he had to learn as much as possible about criminal law if he had any chance of fighting the allegations. The self-proclaimed activist also began regularly attending Metro Council meetings to advocate for the homeless, and last year he even made an unsuccessful bid for an at-large seat on the council.
Meanwhile, Longaberger continued to complain about the homeless man, and prosecutors ultimately resurrected the assault case. In addition, he further accused Reiter of stalking and sought a protection order.
A judge eventually threw out the misdemeanor stalking warrant, though, declaring at a hearing last spring: “Mr. Reiter has never done anything that is threatening to Mr. Longaberger. I don’t find that his actions would reasonably cause a person to feel terrorized, threatened or intimidated. I’m dismissing the warrant.”
But it would be another year before Reiter—who had no criminal record before his encounters with Longaberger—was completely cleared of wrongdoing.
In selecting a jury at the start of Reiter’s trial last Monday, defense lawyer Patrick Frogge—who took the case pro bono—questioned prospective jurors about their views on homelessness before launching into an opening argument that at times touched on broader, social issues.
“Mr. Longaberger could not walk out his front door without seeing homeless people. He came to believe homeless people owned the park, and he didn’t like it,” Frogge argued at the start of the trial. He further suggested that Longaberger became obsessed, which is evidenced by the many photographs and hours of videotape he took from his window. “Mr. Reiter is not a shy man,” Frogge said of his client. “When he saw someone crouched down in the bushes taking pictures of homeless people, he wanted to know who that person was.”
Only two witnesses testified at trial: the officer who issued the misdemeanor citation and Longaberger. Neither convinced the jury, which deliberated for 30 minutes before finding the defendant not guilty. In the end, though, Reiter wound up spending 45 days in jail, in part because he couldn’t afford to post bond.
In explaining the jury’s verdict, Longaberger suggests the jurors merely felt sorry for the “poor, pitiful” homeless man.
But Reiter says his accuser is to thank for the outcome: “The jury saw right through him on the stand.... His vindictiveness and mean-spiritedness came shining through.”
During a preliminary hearing last year, Longaberger voiced his concern about homeless advocacy groups running the city’s streets, saying, “We might be safer having al-Qaeda than the Homeless Power Project living in our community.” Despite such comments, he denies having any ill will toward the homeless, but admits he never has been very friendly with them: “If that’s hating somebody, then fine.”
Interestingly, Longaberger may be even more unpopular at the DA’s Office, which has long suffered his persistent and frivolous complaints. On a website chronicling his legal battle—statevreiter.com—Longaberger boldly accuses a prosecutor with close ties to local homeless advocates of using her position to “influence the preparation of a faulty warrant and its ultimate dismissal.”
“There are a lot of allegations Mr. Longaberger has made against our office,” says Susan Niland, spokeswoman for Nashville’s district attorney. “These claims are utterly unfounded and without any support whatsoever.”
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