The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is weighing a case that will test the limits of privacy involving teachers and students -- deciding whether a mother can be prosecuted for violating wiretap laws by planting a cell phone in a high school locker room to investigate allegations of verbal abuse by a basketball coach.
The mother, Wendee Long, was sentenced to five years in prison — reduced to three years of probation by the trial judge — for using an iPhone taped inside a locker to unlawfully intercept the coach’s halftime and post-game speeches to the girls basketball team for Argyle High School, just north of Fort Worth in Denton County.
A state appeals court, however, overturned the conviction, ruling that the wiretap law didn’t apply because coach Skip Townsend had no reasonable expectation of privacy while acting as a public school teacher providing instruction to students.
Now the case is before the Court of Criminal Appeals, which will issue the final word on a case that is about much more than Long’s criminal record.
For more on the case, read American-Statesman reporter Chuck Lindell's full story at mystatesman.com.
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