A former San Francisco accounting professor has been sentenced to probation after pleading to charges that he secretly recorded videos of several people, including men, in the bathroom of his Castro district home in 2013.
Mark Jennings Landis, 39, pleaded no contest Wednesday, February 24 in San Francisco Superior Court to 15 misdemeanor counts of invasion of privacy, according to Alex Bastian, a spokesman for the district attorney's office.
Landis is to serve three years of formal adult probation. He received credit for a brief stint in custody and won't serve more jail time in the case unless he violates his probation. If he does, he could be sentenced to up to 14 and a half years in jail, according to prosecutors.
Judge Loretta Giorgi didn't order Landis to register as a sex offender, but he's been told not to contact the victims or come within 150 yards of them, under a criminal protective order that's valid for three years.
A warrantless search condition has been issued, meaning any officer may search Landis, his home, computers, and other devices at any time while he's on probation, according to the DA's office.
Landis' probation terms also include a requirement that he undergo two years of mental health treatment with a therapist or psychiatrist, and he's supposed to perform 150 hours of community service.
Bastian said in an interview that prosecutors "respectfully disagree with the judge's terms. We believe that any disposition of the case should have included a requirement to register as a sex offender."
Attorney Thanh Ngo, who represented Landis, didn't respond to a request for comment. Landis didn't reply to a Facebook message, and there was no answer at a phone number listed for him.
According to court records, Landis made at least 180 videos, and his recordings dated back to March 2013. Police had also retrieved a "last will and testament �" suicide note," San Francisco police Sergeant Chahmal Kerow wrote in a 2013 probable cause statement. Documents indicate at least one of the 15 victims is female.
The accusations against Landis came after a man and his friends went to Landis' apartment in the 4000 block of 17th Street one night in November 2013 for a celebration. At the time, Landis was a professor at San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco, and his victims were all former or current students.
At one point, the man was using the bathroom and, after reaching for a tissue from a box on top of the toilet, noticed a blinking light coming from the box. He quickly "realized that the box was a hidden camera," Kerow wrote in his statement.
The next day, the man and three other victims confronted Landis, who apologized, according to Kerow. Three days later, some of the victims filed a police report.
Landis was arrested in July 2014 and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was released on $100,000 bail shortly after being taken into custody.
Spokeswomen for SFSU and USF have said he no longer works for the schools.