Undercover busts at strip clubs that led to dancers being charged with lewd conduct charges for doing their jobs, a long time practice in Pasco County, are facing a legal challenge on April 9 that may eradicate the practice.
Tampa lawyer Luke Lirot, an adult entertainment law specialist, is asking a judge to throw out the lewdness charges against 22 dancers, citing a 1991 opinion by the Florida Supreme Court that ruled for an act to be considered lewd somebody must be offended.
That somebody, Lirot argues, cannot be a police officer. There must be somebody else, Lirot said, an unsuspecting member of the public who does not want to be exposed to the act in question.
Lirot has already won similar cases using the same argument in two other Florida counties. Two trial judges have both ruled that law enforcement officers do not constitute "unsuspecting members of the public." Thus, they cannot qualify as an "offended" person. If no one is offended, then it isn't lewd.
Those previous rulings, while not binding in Pasco, still carry weight because no Florida appellate court has taken up the issue, Lirot said.
Prosecutors say they will defend the arrests of the dancers by arguing that the only way to regulate activity inside a strip club is to use undercover deputies as witnesses.
"Under (Lirot's) theory, you'd have to have somebody else there watching, a civilian who's going to be offended," said Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis.
That's asking the impossible, Halkitis said. He's aware that no patron who pays a cover charge and read the warning sign on the door is going to be offended by strippers.
"The only way to enforce the law is for the Sheriff's Office to keep doing what they're doing," Halkitis said.
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