December 21st, 2009 // comments (1)

NAKED MAN UPDATE

Remember the story we touched on the radio show about a D.C. man arrested for indecent exposure in his own house? An update on the case after the cut.

To catch you up, Erick Williamson, 29, was arrested for indecent exposure after a neighborhood mother and her son wandered on his property and gazed through his window to find him nude. He was home alone at the time and Williamson swears up and down that it was an accident. It was my contention all along that the mother should have never been on his property in the first place and I don’t see much reason to arrest someone for being nude in their own home. The judge, however, couldn’t have disagreed more.

Testimony in the hour-long trial before Fairfax General District Court Judge Ian M. O’Flaherty revealed that two separate incidents of alleged exposure had occurred over a two-hour period. Williamson denied standing naked in his doorway or front window and said he had no intent to expose himself to anyone. But O’Flaherty wasn’t buying it and likened Williamson to bank robber John Dillinger, who also “thought he was doing nothing wrong when he walked into banks and shot them up.”

Really? Even if there was a separate incident, if this woman wandered on to his property to witness the nudefest, that’s on her. And John Dillinger? Isn’t that a bit like tossing out a slavery or holocaust reference in a political debate?

In the end, Erick Williamson avoided any fines or jail time. But, really, isn’t the embarrassment even worse? I’d rather spend a decade in jail than have neighbors view me as a sexual predator.

Related:

• December 11, 2009 -- THE PEEPS STORE