A Victory for Peeping Toms

It's "open season for peeping Toms," says an Oklaholma Court of Criminal Appeals judge -- the lone dissenting voice on a 4-to-1 decision in favor of a 34-year-old perv who stuck his camera underneath a 16-year-old girl's skirt and flashed.

Ew. And I thought these things only happened on the New York City subway system.

The problem, you see, is this 16-year-old skirt-wearer expected privacy in public. According to the Feminist Daily News Wire, as originally reported by Tulsa World, the court decided "the [Peeping Tom] statute only applies in situations where the victims are in a reasonably private place such as their own homes, a restroom, or a locker room."

So, let me get this straight...it's not okay to violate someone in his or her own home, but it is okay to violate that person as soon as he or she sets foot on the sidewalk. Why would the court make such a distinction? To protect all those people who "accidentally" take photos or videotapes of other people's private parts?

Inappropriate behavior runs a spectrum, and perhaps Oklaholma's court of criminal appeals' judges have become inured, in our Girls Gone Wild culture, to the ever-changing concept of "private parts" and personal dignity. (If you're a paparazzo, it's apparently okay to take photographs of just about anything.)

So let me explain it to them: there's a difference between being benignly leered at in public (such is life) and having your private parts photographed by some creepy scumbag against your will. Everybody knows that. Why don't these judges?

Memo to Fox News anchor-lady who are "feminine...so we don't wear the pants" -- if you go to Oklaholma, keep your legs crossed.

Comments

[1will]

I think everyone is a little disgusted by this verdict. I'm sure we can agree on that. My question is does anyone know the politics of this judge? It always seems like it's some liberal judge that frees the chid molestors because "they're too small to survive in prison" or gives probation to violent repeat offenders.

[SamSedaei - Huffpost Blogger]

From an ethical perspective, this is obviously an unfavorable outcome. But from a legal stand point, I think the question is a bit murkier. Think about it this way: This is an Appeals Court. So what they rule can be considered precedent for many lower courts. In that context, imagine they were to rule against this perv. How should they have worded the ruling? "No one can take pictures of someone else's private parts against their will in public"? What if you're at a public swimming pool and are taking a picture of your friends, and there in the background, there is a lady in a two-piece bikini. Does the ban cover this situation? How can you prove you didn't set your friend up in front of you just so you could take the picture of that stranger if the stranger believes you took the picture intentionally? And what if there are conflicting accounts of the story? What if someone takes the picture from the floor beneath a glass ceiling, over which skirt-wearing people walk? What if someone takes the picture of someone who is wearing a transparent, or even a low-cut blouse, in public? How can enforcement define what constitutes peeping while you're in the public arena where anyone (and by association, anyone's hand) has the right to be present anywhere in the space, even if that space happens to be between someone else's legs? Or how much of the private parts - such as a woman's breasts - have to be uncovered in order for taken pictures of those parts be defined legally prohibitive? It is completely wrong from an ethical standpoint, but when you think about where you legally draw the line, you realize that it can become quite confusing.

So when issuing the ruling, courts try to rule not in a way that it'd fit what they believe should happen to a specific case, but rather how is that ruling going to be interpreted throughout all the lower courts in all the future cases - all of which will be somewhat different - and more importantly, whether there will be any mechanism for systematically enforcing that ruling. I can't tell what the court was thinking in this case specifically; But if I had to guess, I'd say that they weighed the practicality of such a ban were they to set the precedent for and decided that the more practical approach would be to shift the risk to the person who wears the skirt, implying that if you wear the skirt, you take the risk that one in a million people may violate the most basic and ethical social norms and does something inappropriate. May there have been a narrow ruling they could have issued? maybe, if they tried harder. But I don't expect much more than this from Oklahoma.

[anon004]

I wonder if this perv was prosecuted under the wrong law. This type of behavior is basically an assault. It would probably have been upheld if he had been convicted under that kind of law.

[Jess27]

Exactly what I was thinking. Privacy shouldn't have been the issue, it should have been some form of assault/child porn that this pervert was charged with.

[1will]

Anyone have any info on these judges? Libs or Conservatives?
I can already guess which political group they belong to by their ruling.

[desmirl]

What don't you get about the fact that this happened in Oklahoma?

[larry278]

I thought that the place is called Okla-homo since the lady in their legislature started making homophobic noises.

[Quaoar]

Fortunately, most Oklahomans prefer farm animals to 16 year old girls so this is hopefully just an isolated incident.

[oldpotsmuggler]

I think I go with the judges. Could legislation be passed outlawing the taking of photographs by placing a camera surreptitiously between the legs of a skirt wearing female? Presumably. Should a law that doesn't say that be stretched to acieve that goal? I don't think so. We mostly have a tradition of not allowing people to be imprisoned on the basis of laws that have been stretched.

Now let me throw another one out. I was once in prison with a creepy guy who got convicted of focusing his camera on the crotch area of girls wearing bathing suits on the beach. His conviction was for "child pornograhy", and was upheld by a Federal Appeals Court. Do you agree with these judges?

[Rockwell]

So, as a gay man, the good citizens of OK wouldn't mind if I start peeking up men's shorts or taking candid snaps of their dangling participles? What's wrong with that state?

[PatriotActor]

"Why would the court make such a distinction?"

Because the actual text of the law does. Judges aren't supposed to make up laws, they're supposed to make decisions based on the laws that exist.

The legislature did the right thing after this case, amending the law (with a vote of 98-0) to make this abhorrent behavior illegal.

[Rockwell]

Gotta say, when you're right your right. It's not the court's place to create but to interpret law. And your right, the legislature moved quickly to remedy the situation. I withdraw my previous snarky comment.

[CaveatMagnusFrater]

...The Republican’s bill would prohibit the use of “photographic, electronic or video equipment to gaze or look upon any person and capture an image of a private area of the person without the knowledge and consent” ....

With this ammendment, if you photgraph someone walking around naked in public, you can be convicted. One extreme to the other.

[PatA]

Oh Lordy, I lived in Oklahoma for 60 years! I worked at the state capitol for years and I cannot imagine any of the judges on Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that way when I was there.

Ewwwwwwwwww.

[SamThornton]

Even though I have relatives who live in Oklahoma -- or perhaps because I do -- I've come to the conclusion that the folks who live there are not like the you and me.

All that hoo-hah about flying saucers and aliens in Roswell, New Mexico a few years ago was, I'm convinced, simple misdirection. The real aliens landed in Oklahoma, hatched out of their pods, and took over the good citizens of the state. How else can anyone account for Barry Switzer, James Inhofe, and Oral Roberts?

The most conclusive piece of the puzzle may be, however, The Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority in the ominously named Burns Flat, Oklahoma. Guess they aren't launching flying saucers every night of the year. Not.

[mediamarv]

Just proof again that OK is a breeding ground for some very strangs characters, not all of whom are in Congress.

[Ajita]

Ive got a solution, How about forcing the creep to wear a skirt in the same public place and a police officer take a picture of him and put it on the local news channels?