Saturday, December 11, 1999
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Associated Press
CARSON CITY -- A lawyer for a
Tahoe casino is defending court restrictions on a videotape of a melee
between two women and several casino guards -- limits imposed at a hearing
to which the women claim they received no advance notice.
Caesars Tahoe attorney Michael Johnson
didn't mention the notice issue this week in asking the Nevada Supreme
Court to reject a petition from one of the women challenging the limits in
efforts to beat misdemeanor assault and battery charges.
Instead, Johnson focused on what he
termed a valid Justice Court order to prevent a "circus-like spectacle" in
the case involving Aneka Leth Routsis, 35, of Incline Village and
Stephanie Landauer, 27, of Kings Beach.
He added that the ruling prevents Routsis from posting clips from the
Sept. 5 tape "on her pornographic Internet website" or using the tape "as
a means of promoting her career as an adult entertainer."
Johnson also said Tahoe Justice of the
Peace Steve McMorris' order, later ratified by Justice of the Peace James
Mancuso of Incline Village, didn't prevent the defendants or Routsis'
lawyer, Mike Roeser, from getting a copy of the tape.
The attorney said
the order merely prohibits any recopying or broadcasting, and that doesn't
amount to what Roeser calls an impairment of his defense efforts.
Roeser also said only the defense or
the prosecution legally could seek such pretrial restrictions -- but
Johnson insisted Caesars had the same rights.
According to Roeser, the tape shows
Landauer being pushed face-first into a wall -- by accident, according to
guards -- and Routsis trying to help her friend and being thrown, kicking
and screaming, to the ground by several security guards.
The two women had been dancing and
drinking until after 4 a.m. at Nero's, a Caesars nightclub. They were told
to leave after moving from the dance floor to "go-go" cages reserved for
dancers working in the club.
Roeser's
petition to the high court says there was no notice to the women or to him
in advance of a Sept. 15 hearing that resulted in restrictions on the
videotape.
Caesars' motion for the
restrictions was filed a day earlier, and a copy of the motion arrived at
Roeser's office a day after the ruling.
McMorris then recused himself and asked Mancuso to take over.
Mancuso backed him up at an Oct. 1
hearing, saying the tape could turn the case "into some sort of
circus-like O.J. spectacle.