Spouse’s Expectation of Privacy Extends to Protection from Other Spouse’s Surreptitious Videotaping Through Bathroom Peephole

State v. Perez, Minn.Ct.App., 3/9/2010.  Mr. Perez’s estranged wife, K.P., discovered that Mr. Perez had been videotaping her, naked, getting into the bathtub in the bathroom that the two shared at the time.  The state charged Mr. Perez with interference with privacy under Minn.Stat. 609.746.1(d) for videotaping K.P. without her knowledge while she undressed in their shared, residential bathroom.

Mr. Perez argued that K.P. did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy when she occupied a residential bathroom with her husband, or that she had no reasonable expectation of privacy because of the marital relationship.  Here’s what the statute says:

A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who:

(1) surreptitiously installs or uses any device for observing, photographing, recording, amplifying, or broadcasting sounds or events through the window or other aperture of a . . . place where a reasonable person would have an expectation of privacy and has exposed or is likely to expose their intimate parts . . . or the clothing covering the immediate area of the intimate parts; and (2) does so with intent to intrude upon or interfere with the privacy of the occupant.

The appellate court concludes that K.P.’s reasonable expectation of privacy extended at least to protection from Mr. Perez’s surreptitious videotaping of her through a peep hole into the bathroom.  The court affirms his convictions.