criminal justice

Lawyer who once moonlighted as a stripper uses indicted governor's argument in seeking a pardon

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A lawyer who moonlighted as a stripper while in law school is asking Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens to pardon him for secretly recording sexual encounters—and he’s using the governor’s own arguments.

California lawyer Paul Henreid had taken a guilty plea in 1999 under Missouri’s invasion of privacy law. It’s the same statute used to indict Greitens for allegedly taking a partially nude photo of his former mistress without her knowledge and consent. Now Henreid is asking Greitens to act on his long-time pardon request, report the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Washington Post and the Kansas City Star.

Greitens had argued in a motion to dismiss the indictment that the privacy law was intended to apply to peeping toms who take photographs in places such as restrooms and locker rooms. The motion argues that the law does not apply to people participating in consensual sexual activity at a person’s home.

Henreid made the same argument. “What’s good for the governor should be good for the gander,” says Henreid’s lawyer, Albert Watkins, in a press release.

Watkins also represents the ex-husband of Greitens’ former mistress.

Henreid is a lawyer and documentary filmmaker who attended Washington University law school when he was working as an exotic dancer in St. Louis. He was accused of secretly videotaping a 17-year-old girl who worked in the club’s coat room, along with other young women who had sex with him. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail, according to a Post-Dispatch story on the case published in 1999, when his name was Paul Henroid.

Typo in third paragraph corrected at 9:55 a.m.

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