Just
how funny was that story of the man in Fairfax County, Virginia, who got up
early on Monday morning, October 19, and walked naked into his own kitchen to
make himself a cup of coffee? The next significant thing that happened to
29-year-old Eric Williamson was the local cops arriving to charge him with
indecent exposure.
It turns out that while he was brewing the coffee, a mother who was
taking her seven-year-old son along a path beside Williamson's house
espied the naked householder and called the local precinct, or more
likely her husband, who turns out to be a cop.
Yes, I wasn't wearing any clothes, Williamson said later,
but I was alone, in my own home and I just got out of bed. It was dark
and I had no idea anyone was outside looking in at me.
The story ended up on TV, and in the opening rounds the newscasters
and network blogs had merciless sport with the Fairfax police for their
absurd behaviour. Hasn't a man the right to walk around his own home
dressed according to his fancy? Answer, obvious to anyone familiar with
relevant case law: absolutely not.
Williamson will be lucky if they don't throw a cobbled-up indictment
at him
Peeved by public ridicule, the Fairfax cops turned up the heat. The
cop's wife started to maintain that first she saw Williamson by a glass
kitchen door, then through the kitchen window. Mary Ann Jennings, a
Fairfax County Police spokesperson, stirred the pot of innuendo:
We've heard there may have been other people who had a similar incident.
The cops are asking anyone who may have seen an unclothed Williamson
through his windows to come forward, even if it was at a different time.
They've also been papering the neighbourhood with fliers, asking for
reports on any other questionable activities by anyone resembling
Williamson.
I'd say that if the cops keep it up, and some prosecutor scents
opportunity, Williamson will be pretty lucky if they don't throw some
cobbled-up indictment at him. Toss in a jailhouse snitch keen to make
his own plea deal, a faked police line-up, maybe an artist's impression
of the Fairfax Flasher, and Eric could end up losing his visitation
rights and, if worst comes to worst, getting ten years in jail and being
posted for life on some sex offender site.
You think we're living in the 21st century, in the clinical fantasy
world of CSI? Wrong. So far as forensic evidence is concerned, we remain
planted in the 17th century with trial by ordeal, such as when they
killed women for being witches if they floated when thrown into a pond.