Brothel Patrons Have No Legal Expectation of Privacy, Judge Rules

[bluedigger]

[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0.3077em 0.3077em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Brothel Patrons Have No Legal Expectation of Privacy, Judge Rules[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-right: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]Brothel patrons have no expectation of privacy, a Maine judge has ruled while dismissing 49 criminal counts against a man accused of secretly filming illicit sexual encounters at his Zumba studio that authorities claim was a bordello.

A local judge dropped the counts against Mark Strong, Sr., who was accused of breaching the privacy of those who paid to have sex with his female business partner at a Kennebunk, Maine dance studio he managed.

The 57-year-old defendant’s attorney, Dan Lilley, successfully argued that the state law protecting the privacy of people in dressing rooms, locker rooms and restrooms did not apply to those having illegal sex with a prostitute.

That law, Lilley argued, “does not apply to bordellos, whorehouses and the like.” He said “those places are to commit crime. There is no expectation to privacy.”

The judge, Nancy Mills, agreed on Friday. “These patrons may have had a subjective expectation of privacy, but I can’t find an objective expectation of privacy that society would be willing to accept,” she said in her ruling, according to the Portland Press Herald.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/fuggedabout-brothel-privacy/

Makes sense to me.

[msanthrope]

1. "Bordellos, whorehouses, and the like..." The Capitol Building occupants should beware. nt

[WillyT]

4. + 1,000,000,000... What You Said !!! - K & R !!!

EXACTLY !!!

[immoderate]

2. Somebody is getting screwed here.

Jus' sayin'.

--imm

[madinmaryland]

3. Republicans nationwide are running scared shitless from this decision.

Pictures of Vitter??

[DJ13]

5. Hooker patronage as performance art?

"Shows daily, every 3 minutes!"

[Auntie Bush]

6. Their names should be published in the local paper.

That ought to cut down on prostitution...which is illegal.

It burns me the women involved who get caught go to jail...why not the men? It takes two to tango. One couldn't be arrested for being two sexy. If two people participate in an illegal act...both are equally guilty. If someone gets caught buying drugs...they are both charged. Why are men excused? That's always befuddled me.

[WinkyDink]

10. Did you Google? The men ARE being named in the papers:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/121016/zumba-alexis-wright-johns-maine-prostitution-ken

[Auntie Bush]

12. Yes, some are but the vast majority are not.

Isn't that ME case what started this topic?

By the way McAfee gave a warning for that site.

[kenny blankenship]

7. Of course, if you are doing something you shouldn't

nothing anyone does to you is wrong. You're shoplifting and someone puts a revolver behind your ear and pulls the trigger blowing your brains out? Or maybe they just pistol whip you and take your wallet. Either way, too bad for you. By breaking the law you made yourself fair game for someone else's consequence free crime. You're dealing drugs on the corner and somebody drives by and unloads a shotgun into your face? Too bad for you. You shouldn't have been out there breaking the laws. You shouldn't have been doing something wrong. No harm no foul. The killer must go free. You're a tax cheat and somebody breaks into your apartment stealing everything of value and all your money? Too bad for you, the law doesn't have to catch the thief and restore your belongings. You're a hooker and somebody brutally rapes you? Too bad for you. You shouldn't have been using your body to commit a crime. But because you did, all bets are off and there's no such thing as rape for you.

Once you're doing something wrong, you've no right to expect the protection of law. Yeah that's justice.
Stupid conservative Judge. Like most of her kind she confuses the social respectability of victim of the crime to be determinant of the defendant's measure of guilt. The law forbidding videotaping, without consent, people having sex or getting undressed is the law regardless of who the perpetrator is violating. Smith's violation of the law doesn't give Jones license to then commit crimes against Smith. People who don't get that will also say "you can't really rape a whore" and "Whatever happens to prison inmates in jail at the hands of other inmates is just part of their punishment."

[petronius]

8. How does he get to claim that the filming was OK because people have no expectation to privacy

in a brothel, yet still deny that he was running a brothel? I thought it was a Zumba studio...

(Next question is "what the heck is a Zumba Studio?" but I guess I can google that.)

I feel really uncomfortable with this ruling: it seems to me that an expectation of privacy ought to derive from the place you're in, and whether it is generally a private place. what you're doing in that place doesn't seem relevant.

[WinkyDink]

9. Do you think all crimes committed inside homes should remain "private"?

[petronius]

11. But filming a person in a locker room who was not committing a crime would be a crime, right?

So how far does that go? Is eaves-dropping or wire-tapping OK, as long as the person being listened to is discussing a crime? Breaking and entering, to gather evidence of a crime?

It's too blurry, in my opinion. If he was concerned that criminal activity was occurring in the locker room, then he could have reported it to the police. And of course, he wasn't doing it because he was concerned about the prostitution - his interests were prurient. It doesn't seem logical that those who commit one crime (prostitution in this case) lose protection against the criminal acts of others (voyeurism here)...

[WinkyDink]

14. I said "crimes" and I meant "crimes." And the courts have addressed "how far."

Patronage of a prostitute is by definition a crime in the U.S. (99.99%). There need be no "wire-tapping", e.g.

[Lesmoderesstupides]

13. Why is a Joy House Illegal but Whats your Price.com legal?

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

15. "Vitter!!" (Mr. Slate yelled loudly) nt