Court Opinion

ID: 9785551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 22:11:34.100696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:29.087745
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, J.,
specially concurs.
T1 This case is not about an individual's right to privacy against government intrusion as found in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution or Article 2, § 20 of the Oklahoma Constitution. This case is about the legislative branch's role in defining criminal activity, for the State cannot protect its citizens from the criminal activity of others, unless the legislature, by its clear intent, has made the "activity" criminal. They have not done so in this instance.
*195T2 The clear reading of the statute in question here requires that the "person viewed is in a place where there is a right to ... privacy ....1 There is no room for any other interpretation in this statute. The legislative branch has simply not kept up with the fantasies of the deviant mind and the technology used to fulfill those abhorrent fantasies. Most criminal statutes are written as a reaction to some type of conduct or in an attempt to curb future conduct, deemed to be "criminal." The conduct in this case, abhorrent as it may be, is simply not defined as criminal by this statute.2
13 While the judges of this Court may have personal opinions about what conduct should be criminal, we are not the branch of government that is empowered to define an activity as criminal activity. This Court must be bound by the rules of statutory construction so that every citizen is given due process.
T4 This Court must uphold due process, just as powerfully as we uphold all other personal rights guaranteed by the constitutions of the United States and this State, so that the rights of all people are protected against unreasonable governmental abuses. It is, therefore, with these thoughts in mind that I specially concur.
15 I am authorized to state that Judges CHAPEL and A. JOHNSON join in this writing.

. 21 0.$.2001, § 1171(B) [Emphasis added].

. As noted in the Court's Opinion, the legislature has since addressed this behavior.