Tennessee high court rules man who placed secret cam in 13-year-old’s bedroom not guilty of child porn

The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a man who hid a video camera inside the bedroom of a 13-year-old relative in an place where she “normally changed clothes” while showering is not guilty of child pornography.

According to the court’s 31-page opinion, the defendant in the case stemming from the incident, David Scott Hall, hid a camera in the minor’s room and “aimed to record the area of her bedroom where she normally changed clothes.”

But shortly after returning from the bathroom, fully clothed, the victim noticed the camera hidden in her room and shut it off. The video resulting from the incident also did not depict the minor in “any degree of nudity.”

{mosads}Hall was charged with attempted especially aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor after the incident and was convicted of the offense after a bench trial.

But the high court ruled in a split-decision that the evidence presented at the trial was insufficient to prove that Hall had attempted to produce footage that would include a depiction of the minor in a “lascivious exhibition” of her private areas, as is required under Tennessee’s child sexual exploitation statutes.

The court also noted that only the victim’s “torso, from the upper thigh to the neck, was visible” from how Hall positioned the camera and not her face.

“The evidence presented at trial shows at most that the defendant intended to produce material that would include images of the minor victim engaged in everyday activities ordinarily performed in the nude,” the court wrote. 

“Consequently, we hold that the evidence, even when viewed in a light most favorable to the verdict, is insufficient to support an inference that the defendant intended to record, and believed he would record, the minor victim engaged in a lascivious exhibition of her private body areas,” the court continued. “Accordingly, we reverse the defendant’s conviction.”