Monticello - Lawyer Larry Gold says he had a good reason to install a minicamera in the bathroom at his law office, where his three secretaries are women.

People were smoking pot in the office bathroom, he said, and he wanted to catch the culprit.

The camera caught a secretary using the toilet. She spotted the camera and went to Monticello police. They charged Gold, a lawyer since 1989, with three counts of unlawful surveillance, a felony.

Yesterday in Sullivan County Court, Gold took the stand in his own defense as his lawyer, Henri Shawn, guided him. Gold broke down in tears as he talked about losing 80 percent of his clients after the arrest.

Gold said a friend installed a surveillance camera in 1999. Transients had been stealing from his office at 2 Jones St., which is located between the Heritage Inn and the Salvation Army.

Gold said he wanted the camera to watch the entry stairs, but the friend put it in the bathroom. A secretary found it the next day. Gold disconnected the camera, but left the wires in place, running under baseboard heaters through the hallway to his office.

In early 2004, he said, he found signs of people smoking pot in the bathroom. A commercial client complained that he couldn't bring people there for business if that was going on.

Gold said he set up the camera again on Feb. 17, 2004, duct-taping it to a plastic pipe behind the toilet in the 4-foot-by-4-foot bathroom. He hooked a TV to the other end of the cable in his office.

Later, he heard the bathroom door close, and he flipped on the TV. He saw one of his secretaries. She saw the camera and put a towel over it. He said he was mortified.

Under cross-examination by Assistant District Attorney K.C. Garn, Gold said he didn't know the camera was illegal.

"I knew what I was doing was risky. There was a chance someone would go to the bathroom and I would see their rear end or genitals," he said. He said that he should have looked for a better camera, one that would have shown the entire bathroom.

"I was selfish by not thinking about the potential consequences," he said.

The trial continues today before Judge Jonathan Nichol

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