KISSIMMEE, Fla. (Court TV) — Stephan Sterns made a rare appearance in court on Wednesday, testifying during a motions hearing as he tries to have key evidence in the case against him tossed out.
Stephan Sterns appears in court during a motions hearing on April 23, 2025. (Pool/Court TV)
Sterns is charged with murdering Madeline Soto, his girlfriend’s daughter, just days after her 13th birthday. In addition to the murder charge, Sterns is separately facing 60 charges that he sexually abused Soto in the years before she was killed. Soto was reported missing on Feb. 26, 2024, after her mother discovered she had never gone to school. Soto’s body was found days later, on March 1.
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On Feb. 26 and 27, while police were still searching for Soto, they interviewed Sterns multiple times as part of their investigation. It was during one of those interviews that a detective began looking through Sterns’ phone and allegedly discovered photographs showing Soto being sexually abused.
Sterns’ defense said that the detectives never obtained a warrant to search the phone and argued at Wednesday’s hearing that all evidence found in the phone should be tossed from his upcoming trial on sex crimes charges. Sterns testified at the hearing, saying that he believed detectives “were just going to check my Google maps … that was it. That was all I agreed to.”
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Prosecutors said that Sterns gave the detectives verbal consent multiple times at the scene and noted that because they were standing next to each other, Sterns could see what the detectives were looking at on the phone. But Sterns’ defense said that’s not enough — and while acknowledging that legally Sterns was not in custody and was free to leave, suggested a reasonable person would not have known that.
While a warrant would normally be required to search private property, prosecutors say in this case, probable cause combined with the exigent circumstance of Sterns’ factory resetting the device in an alleged attempt to delete evidence was sufficient for officers to take the phone. Sterns’ defense argued that once the factory reset was done, there was no exigency because he had already acted.
Judge Keith Carsten said he would weigh the arguments and issue a written ruling at a later date.
