{"id":496,"date":"2008-09-13T07:12:52","date_gmt":"2008-09-13T12:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=496"},"modified":"2008-09-13T07:12:52","modified_gmt":"2008-09-13T12:12:52","slug":"privacy-interests-in-extremis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/09\/privacy-interests-in-extremis\/","title":{"rendered":"Privacy Interests in Extremis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In a fascinating case decided this week, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed the suppression of a video recording apparently showing a husband having sexual intercourse with his wife, a stroke victim who was unconscious and lived in a nursing home.\u00a0 See<\/em> State v. Johnson<\/a> (Appeal No. 2007AP1485-CR, 9\/11\/2008).\u00a0 The husband was charged with second degree sexual assault, a class C felony, which can result in imprisonment up to 40 years.\u00a0 The offense occurs when a defendant “has sexual contact or sexual intercourse with a person who the defendant knows is unconscious.”\u00a0 Wis. Stat. \u00a7 940.225(2)(d).\u00a0 The statute further provides that “A defendant shall not be presumed to be incapable of violating this section because of marriage to the complainant.”\u00a0 Wis. Stat. \u00a7 940.225(6).<\/p>\n

Pursuant to state regulations and the policies of the nursing home, the husband sometimes closed the door to his wife’s private room during his frequent visits.\u00a0 Staff at the nursing home suspected “sexually inappropriate interaction” between the husband and his wife on one of these occasions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After receiving an administrative waiver from the state and a search warrant (which proved to be defective), local law enforcement set up a hidden video camera, which recorded events in the wife’s room over a three-week period.\u00a0 The defective search warrant prompted the suppression of the video recording, the court having concluded that the husband had a reasonable expectation of privacy during his visits with his wife.<\/p>\n

The case is fascinating in terms of the decisions and decision-makers involved, including the husband, the staff of the nursing home, the state agency that granted the waiver, the law enforcement officers that undertook the investigation, the court that issued the warrant, and the prosecutor who charged a serious felony.\u00a0 Of course, it is essential to recognize that the unconscious wife was not a decision-maker at any stage of this unfolding drama.<\/p>\n

The decision-makers, other than the husband, apparently regarded the wife’s freedom from sex without express consent to be the paramount privacy interest in these circumstances.\u00a0 The wife’s privacy interest in marital intimacy was apparently an inferior interest to this, in their view.\u00a0 They thought she was being sexually abused, and they acted to protect her, even at her dignitary cost of being surreptitiously filmed having sex with her husband.<\/p>\n

And the Wisconsin sexual assault statute lends some support to their view, although quite ambiguously so.\u00a0 The statute says only that the “defendant shall not be presumed to be incapable [of sexual assault] because of marriage to the complainant.”\u00a0 Lots of wiggle room in the phrase “shall not be presumed to be incapable.”\u00a0 And of course the wife has not complained, but apparently she would be unable to do so, even if she wanted to.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These various decision-makers, except the husband, were prepared to end the sexual relationship between these spouses because one of them was unconscious.\u00a0 Should the state declare an end to marital sex in such circumstances?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a fascinating case decided this week, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed the suppression of a video recording apparently showing a husband having sexual intercourse with his wife, a stroke victim who was unconscious and lived in a nursing home.\u00a0 See State v. Johnson (Appeal No. 2007AP1485-CR, 9\/11\/2008).\u00a0 The husband was charged with second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,49,15,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-privacy-rights","category-courts","category-criminal-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}