Missouri Governor Can't Bar Harvard Professor From Mistress Case

(Bloomberg) -- The Missouri governor facing charges over an unauthorized nude photo of his ex-mistress went 0-for-3 in court Monday.

Eric Greitens lost his requests to dismiss his indictment, hold his trial before a judge without a jury and disqualify a Harvard law professor from working on the team that’s prosecuting him. He’s accused of invading his former hair stylist’s privacy by taking a compromising photo of her without consent before he was elected in 2016 and then transmitting the image in a way that it could be accessed on a computer, a felony under state law.

Greitens, a Republican and a Rhodes scholar, objected to the St. Louis city prosecutor hiring Professor Ronald Sullivan because of a Missouri law that makes it a crime for the same person to simultaneously serve as a prosecutor and a defense lawyer.

Sullivan previously represented the family of Michael Brown, the black teenager whose killing by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 set off nationwide protests. The professor currently represents a trader facing a criminal securities fraud trial in Connecticut in April.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, the lead prosecutor, argued that that the conflict-of-interest law would only apply if the professor was doing defense work in Missouri. State Judge Rex Burlison ruled against Greitens without explanation.

Sullivan is being paid $12,000 a month for his services. Gardner said he would “bring a new expertise” to the case when she hired him this month.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Bross in St. Louis at btbross@gmail.com.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg

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