No, they don’t.
The current design is intended to make it easy for hospitals to care for patients, which is their goal. The occasional butt flashes that it allows is something the hospital considers far less important. And rightly so. It doesn’t hurt anybody (except maybe those with an irrational fear of skin). Even the occasional cold breeze along a patients backside doesn’t hurt them.
Oh please. You could design them so that the cloth in the back overlaps, making it both easily accessible AND not drafty.
Funny, but a lot of people commenting on this thread seem to be ignoring the facts as established at the time of the trial.
This was not some person just going about their business inside their home while naked, who happened to be seen by someone who obviously did more than just glance in his direction. The judge found that the evidence showed the defendant deliberately attempted to obtain the attention of the passing females, in one case by banging on or rattling something; in the other case by making loud noise or singing.
A much fuller explanation of the case can be found in this MSN.com story.
You will notice that the facts of the case go far beyond the simplistic idea that the defendant was simply making coffee in his home while naked, and was viewed in the process by people who apparently were not content to simply glance and ignore. Notice the testimony from one of the defendant’s housemates, who said that the defendant was walking around naked with a hard hat on, and was warned he’d be visible to people outside. The defendant denied the conversation with the housemate occurred, but obviously the judge didn’t buy that.
Also quite silly is the assertion that this is somehow a double standard. If a man were to walk by a house and report to the police that a woman was standing in front of a plate glass window naked, attempting to draw attention to herself, there is no way the man would be accused of being a peeping Tom. Peeping Toms aren’t prosecuted for seeing someone naked in a home; they are prosecuted for ATTEMPTING to see someone naked in a home. That is, the conduct that is at issue isn’t actually seeing someone inside their home, but rather the attempt to espy someone who is relying upon the common decency of other folk not to peer in through curtains, or blinds, or upstairs windows with binoculars, etc. :rolleyes:
Now, we may never know what actually did take place in Fairfax County with Mr. Williamson. But clearly, this is more than just “naked guy gets espied doing something innocent in home.” Not too surprising, of course, to see Fox News reducing the case to a simplistic and misleading summary. :rolleyes:
From the article you cite:
I think that the defense has the better argument. The prosecution’s contention that–gasp!–singing or making a noise while naked transforms it into lewd behavior is worse than ridiculous.
Mere nudity, outside the home, and certainly within it, is not criminal absent the kind of prurience needed to elevate it to an obscene display. Such prurience is not present here.
Being indifferent as to whether or not someone sees you naked in your house is not the same as exposing yourself to them.
My hospital has this design, and it is, indeed, not drafty and not prone to accidental exposure. Most people who wear hospital gowns don’t need the easy access of a full length opening up the back. Perhaps people who are burned on their backs would need it, but if a patient needs an emergency enema or whatever, it’s almost always not a big deal to hike up the gown instead of resorting to using a back opening. The new designs also includ handy openings for various tubes and shoulder snaps, which means that the IV or other tubing doesn’t have to be disconnected when removing or changing a gown. The new designs are generally easier for both patients and staff to use.
Before the new gown design, I was always given a couple of gowns at a time, and told that I could wear one with the opening in the back, and one with the opening in a front. In other words, it’s the Snuggy and bathrobe thing, only with hospital gowns.
Not according to the article on MSN (nor is such ever mentioned in the article you link to). He was packing stuff up. For several hours. In front of a “large picture window.”
It’s pretty easy to argue that this was intentional exposure simply because claiming that it didn’t occur to you that you’d be visible through a picture window doesn’t pass the reasonable person test. It sounds pretty ridiculous on the face of it, you know? In order for this to truly be totally innocent, you’d have to believe a) that he really didn’t know he’d be visible through a damn picture window b) that his roommate completely made up the conversation where he was warned he was visible and c) that the woman with the kid completely made up him making eye contact with her. It’s possible that this guy is just totally clueless and multiple people are lying about him…but it seems unlikely enough that I can’t blame somebody for arguing it’s all bullshit.
My personal theory–dude was fucked up enough that he wasn’t aware of (or later forgot) the conversation and the eye contact. It would explain him being up before dawn naked and with a hard hat, something I’m having a hard time explaining otherwise.
Well, your Saturdays obviously differ from mine. 
The judge who convicted him “likened Williamson to bank robber John Dillinger, who also ‘thought he was doing nothing wrong when he walked into banks and shot them up.’” This sounds like a nutty man being tried by a nutty judge. Apparently the complaining witness was a policeman’s wife, so he didn’t choose his witness any better than he did his judge.
The man’s lawyer seems to be correct that obscenity is an element of the offense. Obscenity is then defined as follows:
It’s not clear what finding the judge made with regard to this point, if any. I suppose it would have to be a “shameful or morbid interest in nudity,” but that seems to just restate the question: What made this exposure “shameful or morbid”? Is it sufficient to find that it was deliberate?
(emphasis added)
Try reading the article again.
Because this time you might catch that indecent exposure in Virginia requires an obscene element to the display. Nothing you’ve written above gets anywhere near establishing that element of the crime.
That’s a dirty argument tactic. The guy was trying to get people to look at him naked, no matter how much you trivialize his method for doing so.
Even if he wanted people to see him naked, is that inherently obscene or lascivious?
Anyone remember Berkeley’s [“The Naked Guy”](http://en. Andrew Martinez - Wikipedia)?
Edit: Whoops, sorry, broke the link. Heh, not surprisingly, there’s a picture of some guy with his junk exposed.
I really like it that this thread has gone so far without attracting the attention of the SDMB Perv and Deev community.
That’s because they can see into the thread from the outside.
Not that I agree with your conclusion (I think mswas got it in one when he detected indifference), but even still, that doesn’t make it obscene.
Obscenity requires the willful creation of a state of alarm or inappropriate arousal in another (and no, mere male nudity does not per se cause alarm or inappropriate arousal), typically for the sexual gratification of the naked party. I don’t find that here on these facts.
“I’m flattered, your honor, but it’s really just the angle… I’m just average!”
We have a Perv and Deev community and I was not informed?
I meant innocent in the “dude was just pottering around minding his own business when accosted by busybodies” sense, not in the “not guilty, Your Honor” sense. Yes, I think he was within the letter of the law. No, I don’t think he was within the spirit of the law–as I said before, his story just doesn’t pass the sniff test for a reasonable adult of normal intelligence.
Perhaps he was trolling to make a point – hey, yeah, I can walk around naked in my house, and if I leave the windows open and people see me, it’s THEIR fault!
Does that make sense? Almost like he WANTED to get in trouble.
I sing loudly and make loud noises all the time within my home, and I do so without the express purpose of attracting the attention of residents or passers-by. I’m also uncomfortable with being naked, so my noises are almost exclusively while clothed. I can’t imagine I’d stop if I were more comfortable with being naked.