Peeping Tom can’t convince court he was just practicing

Cheng “Peter” Hsu says he was a Peeping Tom in training when he pointed a video camera at a woman using a restroom at Washington State University. Two courts say he was just inept.

Hsu, 33, claimed he deliberately left the lens cap on the camera when he stuck it under a stall divider in a women’s restroom at Cleveland Hall in June 2003 and recorded eight minutes of blackness. He said he was just practicing.

On the contrary, Whitman County Superior Court Judge David Frazier said, Hsu just “blew it.” And, in a ruling released Thursday, the Washington Court of Appeals agreed.

Frazier convicted Hsu of attempted voyeurism in a nonjury trial and sentenced him to 30 days in jail. Hsu asked the Spokane division of the Court of Appeals to overturn his conviction on grounds that a practice session shouldn’t count.

Hsu fled the restroom before his screaming victim could see him, but she recognized the camera as one she had seen in a teaching lab at Cleveland Hall, home of the School of Education.

Hsu confessed to using the camera when computerized card key records showed he was one of only three people who had entered the lab that day.