Texas: Improper Photography

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Funny that the states with a history of having a majority of voters being "anti-goverment" shape their government exactly the way they say they don't want their government.

Whenever there is no clear separation of "church" and State, you get medieval laws enacted (and preserved).
 
One of the interesting aspects of the original case is that the search of the photographer's car seems to have provided the only evidence - albeit only circumstantial - that the man in question may have had some form of sexual motive in taking the pictures. What then was the legal justification for the search? I'm surprised that taking pictures of clothed girls playing soccer would constitute 'probable cause' to justify a search. It does seem most odd.
 
Ade-oh said:
One of the interesting aspects of the original case is that the search of the photographer's car seems to have provided the only evidence - albeit only circumstantial - that the man in question may have had some form of sexual motive in taking the pictures. What then was the legal justification for the search? I'm surprised that taking pictures of clothed girls playing soccer would constitute 'probable cause' to justify a search. It does seem most odd.
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I have no knowledge of the circumstances of the search, but I would presume he gave his consent - probably didn't think that there was anything illegal in his car, so why not? After all, the pornography in and of itself is not illegal to possess (if simply commercial-grade dirty magazines and dvds, etc).

Many people will give their consent to search if they feel they 'have nothing to hide', much to their later chagrin. People want to avoid making the police angry, and police use this to imply that things will go easy for them if they simply cooperate. For example, a person might be told that they can agree to a voluntary search of their vehicle, or they can wait for hours - even days - for a search warrant to be procured. "Give us what we want or we'll take it, and then we'll really be mad at you" is a common inference given.

Some people know not to simply surrender their right to privacy just because an authority figure asks them to.
 
Wonder how Sally Mann's work would have held up in TX? Surely it was not conceived with prurient intent, but it probably could be received as such, with the intent inherent in the viewer and not the photographer. Also, since she photographed minor children of whom she had parental consent (her own), would that meet the consent portion of the statute?
 
jl-lb.ms said:
Wonder how Sally Mann's work would have held up in TX? Surely it was not conceived with prurient intent, but it probably could be received as such, with the intent inherent in the viewer and not the photographer. Also, since she photographed minor children of whom she had parental consent (her own), would that meet the consent portion of the statute?
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Bear in mind that the way the law is written, there is nothing said about the subject matter being photographed other than it be a person.

There are people who have a fetish for (for example) women smoking cigarettes. They get their jollies looking at them, no kidding.

Now, if a photographer in Texas takes a photograph of a woman in public smoking a cigarette, that's no crime. But under this law, if he takes the photo with the intent of obtaining sexual gratification, then he is guilty of a felony.

I would hope that someone who supports this law can explain to me either why this smoking fetishist would not be prosecuted under this law or why he should be put in prison for looking at photographs of women smoking cigarettes that he took himself. Because frankly, I don't understand either one.

The law is clear enough regarding the requirements for the criminal behavior.

1) A photograph of a person taken without consent.
2) with intent to receive sexual gratification.

So anyone who take a photo without permission in public and happens to get their jollies that way is a felon, under this law.

Of course, we understand it to mean only when applied to perverts who like to take photos of children, but it doesn't SAY that, does it?
 
bmattock said:
Now, if a photographer in Texas takes a photograph of a woman in public smoking a cigarette, that's no crime. But under this law, if he takes the photo with the intent of obtaining sexual gratification, then he is guilty of a felony.
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If you can be charged with a felony in Texas for taking a photo of someone, why can't you be arrested for simply looking at that person?
 
wgerrard said:
If you can be charged with a felony in Texas for taking a photo of someone, why can't you be arrested for simply looking at that person?
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I asked myself that same question. It would appear that there is no way currently to determine what a person is thinking, absent any action on their part. However, the clear aim of the law is to control 'wrong thought' and not 'wrong action'. So the law was crafted to couple thought, which cannot be detected, to action, which can.

The problem was, there are already plenty of laws on the books that ban 'wrong action' of this sort - examples being laws prohibiting videotaping in bathrooms or dressing rooms, laws prohibiting upskirt photographs, that sort of thing. But those are clearly violations of privacy (and by that I mean legally-accepted notions of privacy, not notions that the general public appears to entertain from time to time, such as the non-existent right to privacy in public just because they say so).

Improper Photography does not address violations of privacy or any other aspect of what would otherwise be illegal behavior. It instead criminalizes what would otherwise be legal behavior (photographs of people in public without their consent) and couples it with presumed wrong thought (which is the activity the law really seeks to ban).

Of course it should be incredibly difficult to get a conviction on a law such as this - the burden of proof is on the prosecution, and how can you prove what a person was thinking when they took the photograph? However, one also has to understand the notion of manufactured outrage, the desire of jury members not to be seen as soft on crime or accepting of perverts in our society, and populist anger at what many perceive as threats against society - all these preverts wandering around loose like the song "Aqualung." I will say, without wanting to be rude to Texans, that this sort of law would probably not fly in most states.
 
This really isn't anything new to art or photography. As an example, a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cleveland was shut down because of one picture of a little girl. Mapplethorpe, was deceased by then, but he did have consent of the parents to take the picture and it turned out to even be one of the parent's favorites. But the Cleveland PD thought that it was child pornography and confiscated all of the prints at the exhibit. It was eventually resolved but this is a long standing battle in photography history
 
wgerrard said:
Ah, the Spanish Inquisition. People can get away with all sorts of stuff if they convince people they're doing the work of God. Presumably, many people who support the Texan law think that's what they are doing.
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I would be charitable and say that most people probably think they are stopping something heinous, and don't give much thought to what else might be dredged by this law if it is applied indiscriminately. They most likely think of crimes that are indeed prosecuted under this law (from a simple Google search, it appears that most prosecuted under this law were doing things that would be considered a crime anywhere, such as videotaping in a locker room).

The problem is the scope of the law and the probability that it will be abused, given the nature of people and the zeitgeist.
 
hootnholla1 said:
Oh sorry i was mistaken, it actually took place in Cincinnati
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Cincinnati also famously threatened to put a hotel manager in prison because his hotel had a dirty movie channel on closed-circuit television.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/03/05/loc_hotelporn05.html

I do not recall if he was prosecuted or not. Cincinnati called it 'a victory for the family' that hotel patrons could no longer watch adult movies in their own hotel rooms - the same movies they could easily watch on their own television sets at home legally on a DVD or via the Internet.

It has been some time ago, but back in the stone ages, before the Internet, there was a husband-wife BBS sysop team that ran an adult online BBS (bulletin board service, the predecessor of today's discussion forum). They lived in California, but since they were a dial-in BBS, people could and did dial in from wherever they were located. A person dialed in from Louisiana and was shocked by what he found, so he reported it to authorities. The couple were extradited from California to Louisiana, tried, and sent to prison for five years each for trafficking in pornography. Again, not porn that would otherwise be illegal, but the same kind you can find with a Google search or in the pages of a perfectly legal girly magazine.

I realize that there are people who think this is a good thing. I definitely don't agree with such people, and I tend not to like them either, because I think their values are sick. I realize that there are people who will generally agree that sometimes the law goes too far, but that overall such measures are fine and dandy. I disagree with these people, but I don't dislike them, because I think they just don't put themselves in the position of the many people who have been sent to prison, their lives utterly ruined, because they essentially were caught up in an ill-crafted law. They see such laws for the good they do, and tend to ignore that when misused, innocent people suffer terribly - people that could one day be themselves.

I'm not against communities having standards. I don't agree with all the standards that some communities have. But broadly-written laws that attempt to control how people think or feel are generally invitations for disaster, in my opinion.
 
bmattock said:
I realize that there are people who think this is a good thing. I definitely don't agree with such people, and I tend not to like them either, because I think their values are sick. I realize that there are people who will generally agree that sometimes the law goes too far, but that overall such measures are fine and dandy.
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As you imply, many people also make unwarranted assumptions about how these laws will be applied. For example, someone might be inclined to overlook the vagueness of the Texas law if they assumed that "everyone knows what it means..". Or, someone might not be interested in the mind-reading aspect of the law if they assumed that certain behaviors were always motivated by immoral interests.

Then, of course, the biggest assumption is that whatever I think is immoral is also illegal.
 
"I realize that there are people who think this is a good thing. I definitely don't agree with such people, and I tend not to like them either, because I think their values are sick. I realize that there are people who will generally agree that sometimes the law goes too far, but that overall such measures are fine and dandy. I disagree with these people, but I don't dislike them, because I think they just don't put themselves in the position of the many people who have been sent to prison, their lives utterly ruined, because they essentially were caught up in an ill-crafted law. They see such laws for the good they do, and tend to ignore that when misused, innocent people suffer terribly - people that could one day be themselves."

Of course I agree with you. As an outsider looking in, I have to say that the USA is a foreign country in more ways than one, it is foreign in spirit as well as in fact, and people in many other countries must just shake their heads in disbelief. Still, it looks as if many Americans feel the same way about other more benighted parts of their country and the citizens who inhabit those parts.

I quote again an American author who wrote. "When Australia was established you got the convicts. When America was established we got the puritans. You got the better deal."

But I suspect too that its something to do with your political system. I understand that in USA many state public servant posts like District Attorneys are elected where in other countries they are appointed on merit. In this mileu those people no doubt sometimes feel they have to "out rabid" the most rabid elements in society to ensure their re-election. Thus preserving and enforcing a an outdated official morality that sits uncomfortably with modern life.

Without these "wonderful" citizens dumb laws not be passed by the legislature in the first place and without the system they would be unlikely to be enforced should they get on the books in one of those fits of taliban zeal that sometimes emanate from legislatures or having sat on the books for a century as some dopey laws do.

After all in my own state there used until very recently to be (and may still be) a law on the criminal law books that haystack burning is an offence attracting a life sentence. I don't think anyone has been charged, let alone convicted for a hundred years.
 
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peterm1 said:


As an outsider looking in, I have to say that the USA is a foreign country in more ways than one, it is foreign in spirit as well as in fact, and people in many other countries must just shake their heads in disbelief. Still, it looks as if many Americans feel the same way about other more benighted parts of their country and the citizens who inhabit those parts.
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Well, much that's in the character of the U.S. differs greatly from other countries. This isn't American exceptionalism, but a recognition of the history of the place. We've always been a nation of conflicting regional objectives that occasionally are put aside to pursue national goals. This is true even at the time of the Revolution. Some of the original British colonies were created by religious adherents, others by greedy absentee lords, and one as a dumping ground for criminals. A French colony, Lousiana, was added less than two decades after independence, and a former Spanish colony, Florida, soon after that. Later on we acquired the huge Southwestern quadrant of the country, which, even counting from today, has spent almost twice as much time as Spanish and Mexican territory than as part of the U.S.

And, importantly, we have no ethnic or genealogical requirements for being an American. Even in the EU, those characteristics are closely linked with national identity. But, here, all you need to is pass the citizenship test and swear to abide by the Constitution. Of course, an unfortunately large number of Americans are uncomfortable with this notion and agree with my father, who once told me that, to paraphrase, "this country is for white people from England, and everyone else is only here because we let them stay."

I quote again an American author who wrote. "When Australia was established you got the convicts. When America was established we got the puritans. You got the better deal."
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In reality, the actual Puritan influence was pretty much confined to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was founded in 1630 when a large flotilla of actual English Puritans arrived, and other parts of New England.. (The Pilgrims little encampment of 1620 was eventually subsumed into the Bay Colony and owes its reputation to legend and poetry.)

Close to one-half of the white residents of the U.S. have German ancestors. The Protestant religious attitudes of their ancestors have had more impact on the nation's culture than the Puritans.

But I suspect too that its something to do with your political system. I understand that in USA many state public servant posts like District Attorneys are elected where in other countries they are appointed on merit. In this mileu those people no doubt sometimes feel they have to "out rabid" the most rabid elements in society to ensure their re-election. Thus preserving and enforcing a an outdated official morality that sits uncomfortably with modern life.
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All too true. Some states even elect judges.
 
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bmattock said:
Yeah, but you also have Kinky Friedman. So it can't be all bad.
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Speaking of Kinky....I was on assignment back on election day, November 7, 2006, covering his run for governor of Texas. This was shot at the election night party at Shotz's beer garden in Austin. If I remember right, Kinky came in a distant 4th place, but that was okay. It was a great party, and true to character, Kinky gave his concession speech with a cigar in one hand and a beer in the other. 😀

81426446.jpg
 
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