Many Charges Dismissed in R.I. Sex Case
A judge threw out nearly half the charges today against an insurance salesman accused of luring two female Brown University students into a sex-for-hire ring.
Superior Court Judge Joseph Rodgers granted a prosecution motion to dismiss seven counts against Stanley Henshaw III because several witnesses could not be found.
Rodgers also rejected defense motions to throw out all pandering and sodomy charges against Henshaw on the grounds they are unconstitutional.
The bespectacled Henshaw, 43, who sat quietly next to his lawyer, still faces nine sex-related and drug-possession counts, stemming from his arrest on charges that he coaxed the women into a sex ring after taking pictures of them partially dressed or in the nude.
Jury selection began today and was expected to continue for the next few weeks.
Henshaw, a former president of the Rhode Island Life Underwriters Assn., was indicted twice last year after former Brown students Dana Smith of Avon, Conn., and Rebecca Kidd of Orange, Conn., were arrested for soliciting an undercover police officer. Police raided his condominium on the city’s posh East Side in the spring of 1986 and confiscated more than 100 pictures of women.
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