Accused stalker didn’t break law by videoing women in public without consent, TN judges say
A man who police say stalked several women didn’t violate the law when he reportedly recorded women while they shopped at stores in Tennessee, a panel of appellate judges has ruled.
The three-judge panel in Tennessee’s court of criminal appeals reversed 40-year-old David Eric Lambert’s conviction for unlawful photography last month, finding the women he recorded lacked a “reasonable expectation of privacy” under state law.
“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,” Judge D. Kelly Thomas Jr. wrote in a 22-page opinion.
Judges James Curwood Witt Jr. and Thomas T. Woodall came to the same the conclusion in similarly worded opinions of their own.
2016 arrests
According to the Kingsport Police Department, Lambert was arrested twice in 2016 after multiple women reported he “was continuously following them through the store as they shopped” while “photographing or recording them on video with his cell phone.”
The incidents occurred at a Dollar Tree, Hobby Lobby, Ulta and Walmart, police said.
One woman told investigators Lambert stood close behind her in the aisle at Dollar Tree with a “really creepy grin” and took a step with her when she moved forward. She then saw him holding his cell phone “next to her buttocks” while “recording her on video.”
When she tried to leave, police said Lambert reportedly grabbed her butt and said “nice a--.”
Another woman said Lambert followed her out of Walmart and through the parking lot, prompting her to duck between cars in an effort to lose him, court documents show. He reportedly had an “unsettling look” at the time.
According to the appellate court, two sisters shopping at Hobby Lobby also told police Lambert followed them around the store “peek(ing) through things and peek(ing) around things” to see them and otherwise getting “uncomfortably close.”
Lambert was sentenced to more than three years in prison after a jury found him guilty of unlawful photography and attempted sexual battery in 2017, the Times News reported.
Charges tossed
On April 28, the three-judge panel in Tennessee upheld Lambert’s conviction for sexual battery but walked back charges of unlawful photography.
According to the judges’ opinions, Lambert admitted in a statement to police shortly after his arrest in 2016 that he liked “blonde-haired females but (had) no preference.”
“I did not mean to scare anyone and only filmed the females for my own purposes,” the statement reads. “I just liked using the video function on my phone. It is kinda like an obsession with the technological aspect of the phone.”
Prosecutors later used that statement to establish Lambert had recorded the women for “sexual gratification.”
But Lambert reportedly told police he never uploaded the videos anywhere, nor did he remember grabbing the woman at the Dollar Tree.
“I actually did not think I was doing anything wrong because everything was done in a public place,” he said. “However, I realize this was not a good decision on my part. If it was not illegal, it was definitely crossing moral boundaries.”
The three-judge panel disagreed as to whether that statement was admissible evidence but said Lambert’s actions didn’t meet the requirements for unlawful photography under Tennessee state law.
According to Thomas’s opinion, the law makes it illegal for someone to knowingly photograph another person when they have a reasonable expectation of privacy and did not otherwise consent. For it to be illegal, the picture must also “offend or embarrass an ordinary person” and be used for “sexual arousal or gratification.”
The judges agreed there was no evidence to suggest Lambert tried to photograph the women beneath their clothes. In the Walmart case, Witt also said the woman “acknowledged that she was in full view of any person present in the store or the parking lot.”
“Moreover, the evidence established that any image that the defendant might have captured on his cellular telephone was also captured in the Walmart surveillance video,” he said.
Lambert’s case will now return to a lower court for resentencing, the Knoxville Sentinel reported.
