By Pat Murphy
The Daily Record Newswire
You’d think prosecutors would have a slam dunk in getting a conviction for voyeurism when the defendant was caught holding his private parts while looking up at a woman’s bathroom window.
But one should never underestimate the ability of judges to get hyper technical with the language of a statute that ordinary people would find plain enough to send someone to jail.
The beneficiary of one such judicial dispensation is Carl Devoid Jr.
The victim of Devoid’s roving eyes lives on the second floor of an apartment building located in Colchester, Vermont. The window in the victim’s bathroom shower overlooks a parking lot used by residents of the building. The bottom of the window is at the level of the victim’s mid-chest.
Despite her landlord’s advice, the victim neglected to cover the window with a curtain, figuring no one could see her through the window.
Unfortunately, in the apartment right below the victim’s unit lived Devoid, who evidently could hear whenever the victim turned on her shower.
On September 1, 2008, the victim claims that she saw Devoid standing in the parking lot looking up at her bathroom window as she was showering.
Two weeks later, the victim again saw Devoid. This time she alleged that she saw Devoid looking up at her window for three minutes with a hand on his crotch. Doing the smart thing, the victim grabbed her cell phone and took a picture of Devoid, still looking up with a hand on his crotch.
With this evidence the state of Vermont charged Devoid with voyeurism.
Vermont’s voyeurism statute provides that “[n]o person shall intentionally view ... the intimate areas of another person without that person’s knowledge and consent while the person being viewed ... is in a place where he or she would have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
The problem with the state’s case was that, because of the height of the window, Devoid couldn’t see the victim’s “intimate areas” from where he was standing in the parking lot.
Using good sense, a jury convicted Devoid of the lesser offense of attempted voyeurism.
But this good sense resolution of the case didn’t satisfy the Vermont Supreme Court, which on Friday overturned Devoid’s conviction.
“The State’s theory in this case is that defendant’s looking at the window is a sufficient overt act. There are significant difficulties with this theory. Under it, any looking in the direction of a person known to be naked is an overt act even if the person were fully behind a wall.
“Because defendant could not see the intimate areas of complainant’s body and must have been aware of that circumstance, we cannot distinguish between desire to view those intimate areas and intent to do so. Thus, the alleged overt act is not corroborative of defendant’s criminal purpose,” the court said. (Vermont v. Devoid)
Now, in the real world the rest of us inhabit, trying to look at a woman showering sorta captures the essence of voyeurism, so we might not comprehend the superior wisdom of the good justices of the Vermont Supreme Court.
And while it may not be particularly comforting to the women of Vermont, at least Carl Devoid Jr. must be pleased to know just how far he can go in pursuing in his pastime without getting into trouble.
