The arduous path to redemption for Pee-wee Herman seems to be on a more forgiving, downhill slope of late, what with his upcoming 48-performance run on Broadway and the Jambi of modern comedy agreeing to grant his wish for a new movie. But don’t think that his creator Paul Reubens has forgotten about what necessitated that redemption in the first place: Like everyone else, he’s still thinking about his 1991 arrest for allegedly masturbating in an adult movie theater, and now he’s offered a somewhat-belated defense in a new interview for Playboy. While much of it is a plea for sympathy, including a heartbreaking anecdote about being trapped on a plane showing his E! True Hollywood Story episode, Reubens is also out to set the record straight about his innocence—and he’s even got the expert testimony to prove it:

“Had we gone to trial, we had ready an expert from the Masters and Johnson Institute who was going to testify that in 30 years of research on masturbation the institute had never found one person who masturbated with his or her non-dominant hand… I’m right-handed, and the police report said I was jerking off with my left hand. That would have been the end of the case right there, proof it couldn’t have been me.”


Of course, had it gone to trial, any prosecutor worth his salt would doubtlessly have pursued the “Who among us has never given himself ‘The Stranger’?” line of counterargument, but alas—like the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald—this case exists solely in the annals of speculation for future legal scholars to discuss.