Authorities believe that, on three separate occasions in 2014, registered sex offender Jay Huston Williams went to a Snellville Wal-Mart store. He identified his female targets, took out his cellphone and, one way or another, managed to take photos of their "undergarments."
Williams' alleged actions are commonly known as "upskirting" — and, according to the Georgia Court of Appeals' recent ruling in a separate case, not illegal under the state's current laws.
But that's not going to stop Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter from trying to prosecute.
"There's just no way," Porter told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "that I'm not gonna try and figure out a way to charge this."
The Court of Appeals made national headlines — and raised eyebrows — with a July ruling in which it overturned the conviction of Brandon Lee Gary, a Houston County man accused of taking videos up a woman's skirt at a local Publix. In her majority opinion, Judge Elizabeth Branch called Gary's alleged actions "reprehensible" but said they weren't covered under Georgia's decades-old invasion of privacy laws, which have generally been used to prosecute such cases.
Branch urged the General Assembly to fix the issue by passing new laws. The Gary ruling is also being appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.
In the meantime, though, Porter is trying to find a work-around. Last week, he eschewed his office's usual "unlawful eavesdropping and surveillance" approach to such cases and instead convinced a grand jury to indict Williams on three counts of peeping Tom.
Under Georgia law, a peeping Tom is someone who "peeps through windows or doors ... on or about the premises of another for the purpose of spying upon or invading" their privacy — or takes part in "any other acts of a similar nature."
It's that last part Porter is relying on.
"We're gonna argue," he said, "that taking a picture up a person's skirt is an act that is similar to looking through their window."
The new approach could skirt the heart of the Court of Appeals' ruling, which said the store where Gary allegedly took his surreptitious videos was a public place, and the victim therefore had no expectation of privacy.
Messages left for Williams' attorney, Dennis Fortin, were not immediately returned Tuesday.
Porter said he fully expects the indictment to be challenged.
"I have no doubt that we'll litigate this," he said.
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