Jury trial begins today for Payson business man charged with 20 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor

Robert Thomas Flibotte scheduled to appear for jury trial in Globe today

By Carolyn Wall

The jury trial for Payson Realtor Robert Thomas Flibotte, 74, was scheduled to begin today, July 19, before Judge Peter J. Cahill in Gila County Superior Court in Globe.

Flibotte is charged with 20 counts of sexual exploitation off a minor, a class 2 felony that is listed as a dangerous crime against children. The 12-person jury trial is estimated to last six days in the case that has had numerous hearings in Superior Court in Payson since Flibotte's arrest by Payson Police in 2009.

According to the Payson Police report dated October 2009, four technicians reported seeing numerous images of children under the age of 18 engaged in explicit sexual activity on Flibotte’s computer when they were attempting to clean out viruses.

Flibotte stated that the images on his computer were there from a virus, that he had nothing to do with it, that he did not download any images and that the flash drive found in the coffee cup in his residence was a flash drive from his work that somebody had probably put on his desk.

The case went before the Grand Jury and Flibotte was subsequently arrested for sexual exploitation of a minor - distributing, transporting, exhibiting, receiving, selling or purchasing. He was booked into the Gila County Jail in Payson and bailed out on a $100,000 bond three days later.

Since then, Flibotte, with his attorney Elizabeth Flynn, has appeared in Superior Court in Payson numerous times, prompting Judge Cahill to say at a case management hearing in July last year,   “Looking at this type of evidence, because it’s digital and in a computer, is always challenging.”

Cahill told Flynn that he was disturbed that the long-pending case was having re-scheduling problems. “It will be several months before we’re ready to go to trial,” Cahill said at the time.