TOWSON, Md. (WBFF) — A Baltimore County judge ruled Monday that Maryland’s Peeping Tom law does not apply when someone looks through the window of an unoccupied room, acquitting one of three men charged after a string of incidents that alarmed residents at a Towson apartment complex.
Baltimore County District Judge Krystin Richardson found Baltimore resident Johnnie Wade Jr., 53, not guilty after concluding prosecutors failed to prove an essential element of Maryland’s visual surveillance statute — that someone was being watched inside the private space.
The ruling highlights a limitation in Maryland’s voyeurism law, which prohibits conducting visual surveillance of “a person in a private place” without that person’s consent. Lawmakers strengthened the statute in recent years to address hidden cameras and other forms of unlawful surveillance, but Monday’s ruling centered on the law’s requirement that a person be present.
Wade was one of three men charged in May with looking into residents’ windows this year at the Donnybrook Apartments complex on Knollwood Road. Baltimore County Police said footage shows Wade attempting to look into a resident’s bedroom window in March.
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