Judge: Upskirt Photos 'Totally Legal'

Certainly, many folks will not welcome the following decision.

A Washington, D.C. judge has ruled that taking indecent photos of unsuspecting women without their consent is totally legal, because women have no expectation of privacy in a public space. The ruling forced prosecutors to abandon charges against D.C. man Christopher Cleveland, who ABC 7 reports was arrested after he was caught taking photographs of women near the Lincoln Memorial.

Judge Juliet McKenna agreed that the "fact that the Defendant was intentionally photographing publicly exposed areas of women's clothed and unclothed bodies ... is repellant and disturbing," but ultimately concluded that since Cleveland did not go to "extraordinary lengths" to obtain the photographs he did not commit a crime.

"This Court finds that no individual clothed and positioned in such a manner in a public area in broad daylight in the presence of countless other individuals could have a reasonable expectation of privacy," she ruled. "The images captured were not 'incidental glimpses' and in fact were images that were exposed to the public without requiring any extraordinary lengths whatsoever, to view."

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