A man who secretly photographed a sexual encounter in his Edgartown apartment and later texted the nude image only to the other man in it did not "disseminate" the photo under Massachusetts law, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled Oct. 6. The court reversed Clerence H. Goncalves's dissemination conviction and ordered a judgment of not guilty on that charge. It upheld his conviction for photographing an unsuspecting nude person.
According to the court's account of the trial evidence, Goncalves recorded the December 2021 encounter with a camera mounted in his living room that he had not told the visitor about. About two weeks later, he texted the visitor a still image from the camera showing both men nude. A jury convicted Goncalves of both charges after a March 2024 trial in Edgartown District Court.
Justice Elizabeth N. Dewar, writing for the court, held that dissemination under the law requires sending the image to at least one third party. "We hold that sending a photograph of a victim solely to the victim himself or herself does not amount to 'disseminat[ing]' the photograph," she wrote. The plain meaning of disseminate "involves spreading or dispersing material," she wrote, and the law's much heavier penalty for dissemination reflects the harm of spreading an image to others. Prosecutors argued that a victim could see such a message as a veiled threat to share the image more widely. The court said that even so, sending it only to the victim "does not entail the same harms as sending it to third parties," and that any ambiguity in the law must be resolved in the defendant's favor.
The court rejected Goncalves's argument that the photograph resulted accidentally from a camera he had installed for security. It found the evidence enough for a jury to conclude that he willfully and secretly photographed the visitor.
The trial judge imposed the same sentence on each count, to run concurrently: 90 days in a house of correction with 10 days to serve and the rest suspended for a year. The opinion leaves the photographing conviction intact and does not direct a new sentencing hearing.
Source:
Commonwealth v. Goncalves, SJC-13880, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Oct. 6, 2026