Man charged with indecent exposure for being undressed in his own home

David Tinsley (Photo: Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office)

Are you “exposing yourself” if you are naked in your home? Police in South Carolina apparently think so, and they arrested a man in Spartanburg for indecent exposure on Wednesday.

An off-duty police officer spotted the man, identified as David Lee Tinsley, standing naked in front of his window, The State reports. The officer was walking on the sidewalk in an apartment complex in the early evening and saw a man standing inside his apartment in front of the sliding glass window that faces a public walkway. The paper reports that the officer wrote in an incident report that he stopped walking and looked at the naked man. The man looked back at the officer while holding the blinds open, exposing his genitals.

And then the story takes a turn. The officer claims he stood watching the man for “several minutes,” and that the man continued standing there holding the blinds open. Then the officer said he took pictures of the man while he was standing in front of the window. He followed that up by knocking on the door to talk to the man.

“I began to ask him what he was doing and why he was standing there holding the blinds open while exposing himself,” the report states. “Mr. Tinsley stated that he was not standing in the blind holding the window open. I then informed Mr. Tinsley that he was indeed standing there holding the blind open exposing himself because I observed him stand there for several minutes and I was able to capture photographs (of) him standing there.”

Shortly afterward, another officer arrived, and Tinsley was charged with indecent exposure, a charge he denies.

According to the South Carolina code of laws, “It is unlawful for a person to (willfully), maliciously, and indecently expose his person in a public place, on property of others, or to the view of any person on a street or highway.”