YORK COUNTY, S.C. -- A 28-year-old man from York County will spend 30 days in jail after he pleaded guilty Monday to secretly recording his teenage neighbor in her bedroom.
Cody Taylor used a hidden video camera that looked like a pen and taped it to his neighbor's window.
Taylor's original sentence of three years was reduced to only 30 days when he pleaded guilty Monday.
Turns out, peeping Tom laws in South Carolina are far more lenient than in North Carolina.
If you secretly record someone in North Carolina, it's a felony. But in South Carolina, it's a misdemeanor.
Some convicted peepers may not even have spent any time behind bars.
Now people are wondering what the fate of Jonathan King will be. King, a former teacher at York Intermediate School, was just arrested for hiding a secret camera in the school bathroom.
“We were able to find still images from a deleted video involving a juvenile female using the restroom,” York police said.
These days it's so easy to get away with; technology has changed the game. It's easy to buy cameras hidden in pens, clocks, outlets, fire alarms and pretty much anything you can think of.
“It's not like the old-school peeping Tom where you go up to the window you look into the window,” York Sheriff spokesperson Trent Faris said. “The way technology is now, you never know when somebody might be invading your privacy.”
In North Carolina that "old school" peeping, looking in someone's window, is not a felony either, it's a misdemeanor. But the law cracks down on people who take pictures of or record victims without their knowledge.