A man who has six prior convictions of illicitly viewing or filming unclothed women in Detroit-area restrooms pleaded no contest to seventh incident of the act at the Meijer store in Clinton Township.
Cedric James Simpson also entered a plea Tuesday to using a computer to commit a crime in front of Macomb County Circuit Judge James Maceroni for a September 2023 incident at the store at Groesbeck Highway and Cass Avenue.
As part of a plea and sentencing deal with Macomb prosecutors, a separate charge of surveilling an unclothed person in July 2020 in Roseville will be dismissed, and he will be ordered to serve two to 10 years in prison at his Feb. 5 sentencing. The victim in the Roseville incident agreed with the outcome, prosecutors said.
Maceroni told Simpson if he decides Simpson should get a higher sentence, he will be allowed to withdraw his plea and force a trial.
According to prosecutors, Simpson entered the women’s restroom, hid in a stall and held his phone over the top of the adjoining wall to film a woman.
Smith appeared in court Tuesday wearing a state prison outfit because he was sentenced in October to two years in prison for surveilling an unclothed person October 2023 in Wayne County, according to Michigan Department of Corrections records.
He served 10 years in prison for several similar convictions in Macomb and Oakland counties.
He was convicted by a jury in January 2013 of the same charge for peeking over a stall wall to view a woman using the women’s restroom between noon and 1 p.m. July 7, 2011, in the women’s restroom at Buffalo Wild Wings on Market Street in Mount Clemens.
In September 2022, he was caught looking at a woman in a restroom at the now-closed Bailey’s Pub & Grille in Troy and pleaded no contest to the surveilling charge, records say.
For those two cases, he was sentenced to five years in Macomb and four years in Oakland to a maximum of 10 years in both cases, which he completed. He was released in November 2022, MDOC records say.
He previously was convicted by plea in Macomb of three charges of surveilling an unclothed person for three incidents in 2007 and 2008 for which he served two years, MDOC records say. One incident occurred in July 2008 in a second-floor restroom in the county courthouse in Mount Clemens, where he was attending a hearing for a 2007 case.