Keep Your Panties On In Wal-Mart
Next time you’re strolling along in Wal-Mart, or any other store for that matter, make sure you’re wearing underwear.
Why?
Because, you see, once inside a store you have no reasonable expectation of keeping your privates private. Not even if you’re a teenage girl being surreptitiously photographed by a strange man.
OKLAHOMA CITY — A man accused of using a camera to take pictures under the skirt of an unsuspecting 16-year-old girl at a Tulsa store did not commit a crime, a state appeals court has ruled.
The state Court of Criminal Appeals voted 4-1 in favor of Riccardo Gino Ferrante, who was arrested in 2006 for situating a camera underneath the girl’s skirt at a Target store and taking photographs.
Ferrante, now 34, was charged under a “Peeping Tom” statute that requires the victim to be “in a place where there is a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy.” Testimony indicated he followed the girl, knelt down behind her and placed the camera under her skirt.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t in a million years think that, merely by stepping foot into a store, I’d somehow surrendered my right to exclude people from peeking at my panties.
Which kind of makes me wish those judges would stroll into Wal-Mart wearing their robes and see how they felt about someone sticking a cell phone beneath them to snap a few shots.
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Wow. Um, stunned. Um, yikes!
Jeff’s last blog post..Mary Ann Burns Tree
Mind boggling, isn’t it?
Out of curiosity, what does Wal-Mart have to do with any of this?
zombyboy’s last blog post..Mary Anne’s Got the Mary Jane
Aside from that being the location of the “non-crime”, nothing.
But, dude, why would a judge decide that being in Wal-Mart creates a lower expectation of privacy than being on the sidewalk three steps outside their front door?
The story says that it happened at Target–hence my confusion–and I don’t think it specifically has to do with being in a department store.
If this is really the meat of the decision:
“[T]he person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy…”
Then it isn’t specifying a place like Target or Wal-Mart. It’s just saying that a woman wearing a skirt or dress has no reasonable expectation of privacy concerning her undergarments when she is in any public place. Or, at least, that’s how I’m reading that.
Of course, since all of this is coming from a pretty small write up, I think we’re missing a lot of context. What, precisely, does the entire “peeping tom” statute say that guided the judge and the majority of the appellate court to what looks to be a pretty horrible decision?
I wonder if what looks like a bad decision actually stems from a bad law? If so, then I agree with the DA who wants to “amend this statute to criminalize what we consider to be outrageous conduct.”
Because, I tell you what, if that was my daughter, I would have thrashed the bastard who did it and no jury of my peers would convict me of a crime.
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It’s just saying that a woman wearing a skirt or dress has no reasonable expectation of privacy concerning her undergarments when she is in any public place.
Which is mind boggling. Whether she’s at Wal-mart, Target or walking down the street a woman is entitled to expect that strangers have no right to photograph parts of her body that she is attempting to keep covered.
And let us not forget: this is a sixteen year old girl whose crotch was photographed by an adult male against her will. Is that NOT use of a child for sexual gratification?
Oh yuck. And I bet if she had beat the heck out of him with a handy family sized can of French cut green beans, then she would be the one in trouble.
Can’t the lady sue for some sort of civil infraction?
I can’t think of one.
I’m confused, did this happen in a Walmart or a Target store?
The article says it happened in a Target.
Wal-Mart, Target, 7-Eleven, on the street… although I confused the location, that doesn’t really seem to matter.
According to this ruling a woman wearing a skirt or dress has no right to expect that strangers won’t stick their cameras up her hemline and photograph her panties.
Tell me, last time you wore a skirt/dress did YOU think it would be perfectly acceptable for anyone who felt like it to use their cell phones to photograph your underwear?
Kate, the title of your post is just generally good advice, regardless of where the little pencil-necked pervert pulled his shenanigans.
Also, I’m still looking for the news report about Scum-bag Ferrante not pursuing assault and battery charges against his victim’s boyfriend and father for beating the snot out of him in the store parking lot. Maybe such justice isn’t “newsworthy” out in the heartland.
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Still trying to wrap my head around this whole ruling. That the judge has decided location is the governing factor in determining privacy is completely, well, disorienting. I have a reasonable expectation of privacy no matter where I am. If I use the ATM at the Target, I expect that there is not some shoulder surfer trying to pinch my PIN. And if there is, I expect him to get busted after I’ve knee-capped him and called the cops.
That a woman chooses to wear a dress or a skirt in a store’s aisle versus its bathroom should not make a hill of beans worth of difference in her reasonable expectation of privacy.
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It seems to me that anyone wearing clothing outside of their house reasonably expects that strangers cannot lawfully insert cameras underneath said clothing to photograph those parts of the wearer’s body which they had attempted to keep covered.
Wal-mart, Target…who cares? The issue isn’t that Kate mentions Wal-mart in her post, and the suit was for something that occurred in a Target store. Yeesh. Kate was making a point. Man, read between the lines and see the intent! Oh, wait…that’s why these judges made the decision they did…they are incapable of understanding the intent and instead made a horrible mistake.
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This reply is actually for you and for Jeff.
That the judge has decided location is the governing factor in determining privacy is completely, well, disorienting.
Really? You don’t think that your expectations of privacy in, say, your own home are different than, say, at a football stadium during a game? I would say that location has much to do with expectations of privacy.
If I walk around naked in my own home, I have a reasonable expectation that no one is going take and broadcast pictures of my fat ass to the world. If I walk around naked at the stadium during a football game, I’d expect the ridicule that I’ll be receiving and my guess is that you would do the same. If so, then your expectations of reasonable levels of privacy are changed by location.
Now, in this case, it would be reasonable to expect that it would not be legal for someone to bypass your privacy protecting clothing (a skirt or dress or whatever it is that you happen to be wearing) to nab pictures of your undies. That expectation would be changed if, say, you’re Ms. B. Spears and you’re getting out of a car sans underwear, wouldn’t it?
Which leads me to believe that we all have a sort of sliding scale of expectations of privacy that hinge both on place and on the actions of the individual in trying to protect their privacy. What protection the law provides in Oklahoma, though, is still something that I don’t understand.
A slightly longer article that I read had this snippet:
And then, someone quoted the actual statute in Rachel Lucas’s post on the subject:
I’d say that’s either a bad law or a bad law to have tried to shoehorn this offense into. Can you safely define underneath the skirt as a place in the context of the other places listed here? I think that’s a tough stretch, although my inclination would have been to say “yes.” Going back to the Britney Spears thought, though, is her skirt a “place” where she can reasonably expect privacy?
My points: First, that it might not be as bad a decision as it looks like at first blush and other states should look at their own statutes to see what loopholes like this exist so that they can close them. Second, that the judges didn’t decide that people inside Wal-Mart or Target had a different expectations of privacy than a person “on the sidewalk three steps outside their front door.” The post misleads a little bit especially inasmuch as this decision only effects people in Oklahoma–other state laws will differ. It has nothing to do with Target, really, and even less to do with Wal-Mart, although the post makes it seem as if it does.
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Wow, I too am stunned. It’s a violation of common decency for God’s sake. How can sticking a camera up someones skirt be legal?
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I completely agree, but I guess my question here is this: Doesn’t that make this guy a sex offender, just based on the age of the girl? I mean, isn’t under 18 considered child pornography?
It just seems that if they’re going to be idiots about charging this creep, there may be a BETTER avenue to take.
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Let’s not focus on the place, lets focus on the sicko that does that to a human, let alone a minor. If I was the father, hmm…
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Who cares where it happened! LOL
That is just sooooo strange. Should that fall under some kind of child pornography law thing too? What the hell is wrong with people that do these sick things?
I’m baffled at the creation that is our law system, just baffled. Whatever law says it was okay for this sick wacko to stick his camera under a girl’s skirt needs to be revised obviously.
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Holland is considering allowing homosexual sex in public parks and we fret about this stuff?
We must be a very moral society…huh?
With what women are voluntarily showing these days,this guy had no need to “expose himself” as being one who enjoys such activity.
I’ll bet those judges were appointed by a liberal.
Sorry to rain on the parade here, but I’m a lawyer. (That always gets a boo). This case has little to do with Walmart or Target. Under the privacy laws in (as far as I know) every state, if you’re in public, you have no expectation of privacy. If you’re at the beach (nude or regular), there is nothing illegal about someone taking your photograph. Same with Target/Walmart. You can go around and snap pictures of people in public and use them as you wish. (There are rules against adverse publicity and using people’s image to make money. Nike can’t use a photo of Eli Manning wearing Nikes as an ad without his permission.)
As for taking photos of women or girls from underneath their skirts, this guy should be beaten to a pulp and hanged in the town square as the pervert that he is. Unfortunately, the law has not caught up to the lack of common decency that has festered since the 60’s. I would argue that the girl had no expectation of privacy as to her front, side and rear, but underneath–no one expects to be photographed there.
The sad fact is, that under the current law, whether the woman is 45 or 12, whether she’s on the sidewalk, at the gas station or in aisle the WalMart/Target, she has no expectation of privacy from any angle. (She would, by the way, have an expectation of privacy in the changing room).
It’s a bad law and it should be changed to account for the advances in digital cameras and the nerve of perves, but it hasn’t. He’s not an activist judge, it’s just that your state government is too busy spending your money (in my governor’s case, on prostitutes), to do anything about it.
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As a lawyer, you should be able to appreciate the irony:
If she’d walked into a public location without wearing clothes covering her lower body, she’d be arrested for public indecency.
So what is not lawful for her to do on her own IS lawful for a stranger to force upon her against her will?
Bad law.
This is what happens when people elect lawyers to political positions who then, in turn, draft laws. Lawyers should never be allowed to run for office. Fewer lawyer politicians, fewer convoluted laws (which, of course, means more work for lawyers to decipher them). Nice circle, no?
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The judge was probably a Democrat. They think all sexual perversion is A-OK! I hope the peeper doesn’t escalate to actual assault the next time.
For one thing, it’s the Court of Appeals which means there are three judges involved.
For another: I know plenty of Republicans who are freaks. Political affiliation doesn’t always dictate what gets your rocks off.
I think the problem lies with the prosecutor. He decided to charge the prick with a peeping tom violation, which really is more in line with someone looking in your bedroom window. He should have charged him with lewd conduct, or perversion of some type. The prosecution dropped the ball here. I’m not sure the judges had any other option but to set him free under those charges. I’m curious to know if he can be retried under the proper charges…
Has anyone read whether there were other charges filed?
Kate,
I saw you’ve written about Saddam Hussein’s links to terrorism in the past. Have you seen the new information in this Pentagon report? I manage a site on Saddam/terrorism (www.regimeofterror.com) and I was even appalled at how deep he was in terrorism.
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Nope, but then again the link between Saddam and terrorism isn’t really “news” to me.