Judge refuses to remove former Pittsburgh restaurateur from house arrest before sex assault retrial

A judge on Monday refused to remove a former Regent Square restaurant owner from house arrest pending retrial on sexual assault charges.

After hearing testimony regarding an incident involving Adnan Pehlivan from 2012, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Anthony M. Mariani said that he believed keeping Pehlivan on home electronic monitoring was the right decision.

“The risk is too great to change the bail as it is now,” Mariani said. “I’m not going to take another chance.”

Pehlivan, 51, has twice been tried on allegations that he followed a 24-year-old woman home from a South Side bar on May 15, 2018, broke into her home and sexually assaulted her. In both instances, one in May 2019 and the second in October, the juries were unable to reach a unanimous decision. During the first trial, the jury found Pehlivan not guilty of stalking and simple assault.

They were unable to reach verdicts on charges of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, burglary and sexual assault.

The retrial in October led to a hung jury.

Pehlivan was the owner of now-shuttered Istanbul Sofra restaurant on Braddock Avenue in Regent Square. He has repeatedly denied the allegations against him and said that the incident was consensual.

He is scheduled for a third trial to begin on Feb. 1.

Pehlivan has remained on electronic home monitoring — with periods of time where he is allowed to leave his house for work — for two-and-a-half years.

On Oct. 28, defense attorney Lee Rothman filed a motion seeking to remove Pehlivan from those requirements. He argued that his client has never missed a court hearing and that he’s never been convicted of a crime.

“The government has not met their burden of proof at this time,” Rothman said. “My client is an innocent man who has shown this court that he respects the rules, abides by the rules and follows the rules.”

In addition, Pehlivan is being impacted financially because he is required to pay $150 per month for the electronic home monitoring.

Assistant District Attorney Emma Schoedel argued that Pehlivan, who has ties to his native Turkey, should remain on house arrest because she believes he is a potential flight risk and that he is a potential danger to the community.

On Monday, Schoedel called Pittsburgh police Detective Brendan Nee, who encountered Pehlivan during an incident around 2:30 a.m. Feb. 11, 2012, on the South Side.

Nee said he found Pehlivan over top of a woman who had passed out on the porch of a home on 17th Street.

“He was crouched down over top of her,” Nee said. “Something felt wrong.”

He said that as he and his patrol partner approached Pehlivan, they saw him “shuffling his clothes,” adjusting them and appearing to close his pants.

When the officers asked Pehlivan what he was doing, he first said, “‘I was just helping a friend.’”

But then, Nee said, Pehlivan tried to walk away.

“We didn’t know if there was an assault,” Nee said.

The officers detained Pehlivan, placing him in handcuffs while they roused the woman, who was intoxicated.

Once she was awake, she said she didn’t know Pehlivan, and her friend, who police also spoke to, said the same.

When Pehlivan heard the women say that, Nee said, he changed his story and said he had been on the porch to relieve himself, but Nee said there was no evidence of that.

The 22-year-old woman did not want to pursue charges, and Pehlivan was allowed to leave, Nee said.

Mariani acknowledged that Pehlivan has followed the rules on bond. However, the judge said he needed to give serious consideration to the behavior described in Nee’s testimony and the fact that Pehlivan provided false information to the officers. He noted, too, that in the charged crime and the testimony by Nee, it involved intoxicated women on the South Side.

“It suggests a pattern,” Mariani said. “This is way too suspicious to look past it.”