Judges: OK to make videos of women without consent

Three judges — all men — wrote three separate but nearly identical opinions concluding it’s not a crime in Tennessee to film fully clothed women without their consent if they’re in public.

The issue arose in the case of an admitted sexual deviant who was convicted of unlawful photography and admitted he stalked women in retail stores and filmed their “private areas” for sexual gratification.

Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals Judges D. Kelly Thomas Jr., James Curwood Witt Jr. and Thomas T. Woodall collectively and separately tossed out unlawful photography convictions against the Sullivan County man, who has a history of public indecency charges.

In three separate opinions, the trio reach the same conclusion: No one has a right to expect privacy in the digital age.

“Exposure to the capture of our images by cameras has become, perhaps unfortunately, a reality of daily life in our digital age,” Thomas wrote.

“When nearly every person goes about her day with a handheld device capable of taking hundreds of photographs and videos and every public place is equipped with a wide variety of surveillance equipment, it is simply not reasonable to expect that our fully-clothed images will remain totally private,” he concluded.

Thomas, Witt and Woodall agreed evidence showed David Eric Lambert intentionally filmed women for sexual gratification, took “close-up” footage of three women’s “private areas” in three separate stores, tried to hide his filming and admitted he “crossed moral boundaries.”

The three men also agreed Lambert had a string of prior misdemeanor convictions for exposing himself and committing sexual acts in public.

They acknowledged Lambert’s victims found him “creepy” even before they realized he was filming them and tried to evade him. One woman ran out of the store.

Another alerted security.

But, the trio concluded, without an “expectation of privacy,” Lambert’s actions aren’t criminal.

In March 2016, Kingsport Police Department Detective Martin Taylor kept fielding calls from frightened women who all had the same story to tell: A man had stalked them while they shopped.

It didn’t take Taylor long to find a suspect. Lambert had a history of inappropriate behavior toward women in public places, court records show.

When Taylor questioned Lambert, he readily confessed to not only stalking women in stores such as Walmart, Hobby Lobby and the Dollar Tree in Kingsport, but capturing closeup footage of their buttocks for his own sexual pleasure.

Lambert told Taylor he had captured more than 20 videos of women at a half-dozen major retail stores in Kingsport. The software Taylor used to try to retrieve videos failed, though, and Lambert was ultimately charged in only three cases.

One woman was shopping at Walmart in February 2016 when she saw a man advance on her with a look on his face that made her “very uncomfortable.” She walked out of the store toward her car. The man followed, “matching my pace,” she later testified.

She made it to her car, and the man walked away.

That same day, two sisters were shopping at Hobby Lobby when a man began following them around the store.

One of the women eventually confronted the man and used her cell phone to take a photograph of him. He fled out of the store.

Less than three weeks later, a fourth woman was at Dollar Tree when she “felt like someone was standing really close” and turned to see a man with a “really creepy grin” holding a cellphone close to “the right side of her rear end.”

Grizzel testified he “grabbed the right side of her rear end and said, ‘Nice [expletive],’” before he fled, the opinion states.

Three separate juries convicted Lambert of unlawful photography, a misdemeanor. One of those juries also convicted Lambert of sexual battery for grabbing the woman.

Sullivan County Criminal Court Judge James F. Goodwin Jr. later sentenced Lambert to nearly four years in prison, citing his prior history of obscene and sexually threatening behavior.

The 2nd Judicial District Public Defender’s office challenged the convictions, arguing Lambert’s behavior in filming the women wasn’t criminal.

Appellate Judges Thomas, Witt and Woodall say the public defenders were right.

“The [victims were] fullyclothed in full view of any person present in the store,” the panel of judges concluded. “No evidence suggested that [Lambert] attempted to photograph [the victims] underneath [their] clothing. Indeed, a similar image could have been captured by surveillance equipment.”

The three-judge panel left intact the sexual battery conviction. Lambert’s case now returns to Goodwin for resentencing.