Governor Eric Greitens’ criminal defense team has filed a motion to compel the prosecution in his felony invasion of privacy case to hand over exculpatory evidence to him, that is evidence favorable to a criminal trial defendant that may exonerate the defendant of guilt.
Governor Eric Greitens photographed after being taken into custody (Photo courtesy of the St. Louis City Sheriff’s office)
Greitens is alleged to have photographed a woman who was bound as well as in a state of full or partial nudity, and “subsequently transmitted the image contained in the photograph in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer.”
The argument filed by the Dowd Bennett law firm contends the woman in question, referred to as K.S., said she never saw a photograph and that any assertion by her that she saw a phone on the day in question was based on a dream or vision.
The motion also asserts that there’s no evidence of a transmission of any image and states that the prosecution admits it doesn’t possess any photo that forms the basis for the criminal charge.
The court document was filed after the defense questioned K.S. under oath Friday. In it, the defense says the testimony given by K.S. shows that the St. Louis Circuit Attorney lacks evidence to prove Greitens committed the offense.
It also says her testimony revealed that the circuit attorney is withholding evidence, both from the defense and a House Committee investigating the charges against the governor.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is prosecuting Greitens after a grand jury indicted him in late February.
The defense motion quotes K.S. as telling the assistant circuit attorney that she hadn’t spoken about the phone because she may have remembered it through a “dream”.
According to the filing, K.S. said “… I haven’t talked about it because I don’t know if it’s because I’m remembering it through a dream or I – I’m not sure, but yes, I feel like I saw it after that happened, but I haven’t spoken about it because of that.”
The defense team says when it asked K.S. Friday if she had ever seen Greitens in possession of a phone or camera, she responded, “Not to my knowledge. I didn’t see him with it”.
The document says K.S. testified that she had informed the Circuit Attorney that her recollections may have been from a dream or vision, but the Circuit Attorney did not turn that information over to the defendant. It also said K.S. did not inform the Missouri House Committee looking into the matter that the phone could be the product of a dream.
The defense motion is requesting the Court to order the Circuit Attorney to hand over any further statements by K.S. that her testimony may be based on a “dreams” or “visions”, plus statements that she didn’t view herself as an invasion of privacy victim after the March 2015 encounter.
The filing contends that in an event never previously disclosed to the Grand Jury or the House Committee, K.S. now admits she
transmitted images through Facebook of herself to Greitens while she was in a state of partial nudity in June 2015.
It also says that K.S. acknowledged that for months after the alleged “invasion of privacy,” she continued to see Greitens willingly. The motion says she never viewed anything that happened as a criminal matter, agreeing that the “last thing on [her] mind” even in January of 2018 was a criminal prosecution.
The defense further is asking to see a videotape or any information pertaining to a video of an interview conducted by the prosecution’s hired private investigator, William Tisaby, of K.S. The defense says it’s been told by the Circuit Attorney that the videotape machine used for the interview did not work.
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