D.C. police have released an alert about a "suspicious male individual" who is "attempting to make contact with adolescent females as they walk to school." The alert says that yesterday, "the suspect exposed himself to four juvenile females that were walking to school." He's operating around the 200 blocks of 17th Street and 17th Place, NE"—close to both Eliot Junior High School and Eastern Senior High School. He's described as "a black male, 20-30 years of age, 5’7, thin build wearing a white t-shirt, blue shorts, a black skull cap and sunglasses."

Last fall, Fairfax resident Erick Williamson was accused of indecent exposure after a woman and her young child walked past Williamson's house and saw him hanging out naked inside through an open door. Williamson's case hinged on the Virginia definition of indecent exposure, which requires three elements: exposure, intent, and obscenity. Williamson, now forever known as "Fairfax Naked Guy," admitted to the "exposure" part, but he claimed that he never intended for anyone to see him walking around his house naked—and certainly didn't bolster his nudity with any obscene gestures.

In a jury trial yesterday, Fairfax prosecutors attempted to prove Williamson's intent through his gaze: The offended woman, Yvette Dean, claimed that Williamson had looked her directly in the eyes as he stood there naked.

Dean, who was walking her 7-year-old son to work when she spied the naked Williamson, testified that "Williamson was holding his storm door open with one hand, and making eye contact with her." Williamson's lawyers attempted to cast doubt on the accusation by arguing that Williamson's storm door and the footpath Dean used to walk her son to school were so far apart that Dean couldn't possibly have ascertained exactly where Williamson was looking. According to the Washington Post:

Williamson's lawyers hired a private investigator to measure the distance from where Dean was standing to the carport door. Investigator John Hickey said it was 83 feet. A photo taken by the police, of the view from the path that Dean was on looking toward the house on Arley Drive, made it seem like quite a distance, and Dean said the photo was "closer than I was." Defense lawyer Dickson Young presented another photo taken from the path, and the carport door seemed very distant.

But in Young's closing argument, Williamson's defense took another tactic, arguing that Dean would never have looked him in the eye:

Young ridiculed the notion that Dean made eye contact with the naked man.

If a woman is "walking along and sees someone naked," Young told the jury in his closing argument, "the last thing they're going to be looking at is his eyes."

According to the seven-person jury, which found Williamson not guilty in all of 20 minutes, a single witness's claim of eye contact is insufficient evidence to convict a man of intentionally and obscenely exposing himself to his neighbors. And on a personal note, I'm opposed to any legal system that attempts to present all exposure as obscene. But how does that closing argument make any sense? To me, Young's bizarre assumption about how women ought to react to the sight of a naked man reads both as (a) an unnecessary accusation against Dean, implying that a truly offended woman would have immediately averted her eyes, and (b) a weird joke about how no woman could keep her eyes off his client's wiener.

Photo via Tambako the Jaguar, Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0

Ever wondered exactly what you have to do with your penis to be charged with indecent exposure in Virginia? Need to know what sort of aperture you have to be looking through in order to be convicted of peeping? The Washington Post is here to help!

Last week, 29-year-old Eric Williamson was charged with indecent exposure after "a woman and her 7-year-old son walked by his Springfield house and saw him, through the window, naked." The woman claims she was walking her son to school one morning when Williamson presented his naked body to her not once, but twice—first "standing nude in the doorway, " and then "through a large window that appeared to have no drapes." She called the police.

Williamson concedes that he was hanging out naked in his house, but denies that he intentionally exposed himself to the woman and the boy. The police response, Williams says, was extreme. "All of a sudden, I get woken up by police officers, and this guy has a Taser gun in my face," he said. "I'm freaking out. Is this a movie? A horrible dream?" He called Fox News.

The incident has courted international attention to Virginia's indecent exposure and peeping laws. In a Washington Post online chat yesterday, Fairfax attorney Atchuthan Sriskandarajah administered a quick legal lesson on the peculiarities of Virginia's sex statutes. Can a person indecently expose themselves from the privacy of their own home? By the same token, can passersby who happen to spy a naked person through the window be charged with peeping?

According to Sriskandarajah, indecent exposure must require three elements:

* Exposure. Displaying your private parts (breast-feeding doesn't count).

* Intent. The question that plagued the Justin Timberlake-Janet Jackson Superbowl flap.

* Obscenity. The nudity must be accompanied by an obscene act to be considered "indecent."

In Virginia, a person can be convicted of indecent exposure even if the exposure occurred inside their own home—as long as they got naked, deliberately revealed that nudity to passersby, and, like, grabbed their genitals or something.

Virginia's "peeping" statute also contains three major elements:

* Secrecy. No matter where you're peeping, the peep must be "secret or furtive"—the naked person can't be aware you're looking at him or her.

* Residential peeping. In order to prove you've peeped into someone's home, you gotta peep through something. The statute lists windows, doors, apertures, holes, cracks, or any "other similar opening through which a person can see" as acceptable peepholes.

* Commercial peeping. If the peeping is occurring outside a residence—like in a "restroom, dressing room, locker room, hotel room, motel room, tanning bed, tanning booth, [or] bedroom"—you still gotta peep through cracks and holes. But this time, you gotta be seeing something naked. According to the statute, that includes "the purpose of viewing any nonconsenting person who is totally nude, clad in undergarments, or in a state of undress exposing the genitals, pubic area, buttocks or female breast."

Photo by rick, Creative Commons License.