What Does "Lewd" Mean Under Minnesota's Indecent Exposure Law?

Most people assume indecent exposure means one thing: someone intentionally flashing a stranger for shock value. In reality, Minnesota’s indecent exposure law is broader and blurrier than that, and the exact meaning of the word “lewd” has been a moving target for years. A new Court of Appeals decision, State v. Johnson, shows what happens when the legal definition changes after someone is already convicted under it, and it is a good excuse to break down what “lewd” actually means today, and where people can get caught off guard.

The Statute Itself

Minnesota Statutes section 617.23 makes it a crime to, in any public place or any place where others are present, “willfully and lewdly” expose your body or your private parts. Two words in that sentence do most of the work: willfully, meaning on purpose, not by accident, and lewdly, which for a long time had no fixed legal meaning at all.

Why “Lewd” Was Up for Grabs

Until recently, Minnesota courts had never pinned down exactly what “lewdly” means under this statute. Last year, in State v. Plancarte, the Minnesota Supreme Court finally addressed it head on. The court identified four reasonable dictionary definitions that had all been used in different contexts over the years:

• Obscene
• Indecent
• Lustful
• Conduct of a sexual nature

Because more than one definition was reasonable, the court found the word “ambiguous,” meaning genuinely unclear, and had to pick one. The court landed on “conduct of a sexual nature.” Just as important, the court also ruled that exposing your body or private parts, by itself, is not automatically enough to be lewd. There has to be something about the conduct that makes it sexual, not merely embarrassing, crude, or in poor taste.

This is a big shift. Under the old jury instruction, which described “lewd” as “openly lustful or indecent,” a jury may have convicted someone for conduct that was offensive but not actually sexual in nature. Under Plancarte, that same conduct might not be enough.

How This Played Out in Johnson

Jeremiah Johnson was convicted before Plancarte came down, so his jury was told the old, broader definition. On appeal, he argued that the wrong standard was used and that his conviction should be reversed.

He still lost. Not because the standard did not matter, but because the evidence against him was not a close call. He deliberately parked next to the victim’s car, had his interior light on in the dark, rolled his window down, exposed himself as she opened her door, and made an explicit sexual comment to her. He later told police, in the middle of being asked about masturbating, that he had been “trying to get one off.” That combination of behavior and speech left no real doubt that his conduct was sexual, so the outdated jury instruction did not change the outcome.

But notice what the court is actually doing here: it is looking past the bare act of exposure and asking what surrounded it. Words, gestures, positioning, and timing. That is the real lesson of Plancarte, and it is exactly why this law catches people who never thought they were doing anything “sexual.”

Ways People Get Caught Off Guard by This Law

Because “lewd” now turns on context rather than the exposure itself, a lot of situations that feel harmless, careless, or purely practical can still end up charged. A few examples worth knowing about, some drawn from cases North Star has actually litigated:

• Being in your own car or on private property is not automatic protection. The statute covers any place “where others are present,” not just public property. Johnson was in his own vehicle. That did not matter, because he was visible to and interacting with someone else.
• Sunbathing, changing clothes, or relaxing nude at home with the blinds open. If your home is set up in a way that makes it likely someone will see you, and especially if you do anything to draw their attention (calling out, waving, positioning yourself in a window), that likelihood of being observed can be treated as evidence you intended to be seen. Minnesota courts have distinguished this from truly accidental exposure, like someone photographed nude through their own dorm window with no evidence they ever tried to attract attention. That case did not result in a conviction, precisely because there was no sign it was intentional.
• Skinny-dipping or public urination. Context decides everything here. Courts have found that swimming nude in a remote area with almost no chance of being seen does not qualify, but the same act somewhere visible, especially paired with any sexual gesture or comment, changes the analysis fast.
• Statements made to police after the fact. Johnson’s case shows how much weight an offhand comment during an interview can carry. Saying something ambiguous, like his “trying to get one off” line, can be interpreted by an officer or jury in a way you did not intend. What you say in an interview room can end up doing more damage than the underlying conduct itself.
• Gray areas Plancarte has not fully settled. A concurring opinion in Plancarte argued that female breasts may not even count as “private parts” under this statute, since the law uses different language than other sex-crime statutes that specifically define “intimate parts.” That reasoning is not binding law yet, but it signals that courts are actively narrowing what counts as “lewd” and what counts as a “private part” in the first place. That means charging decisions in this area are still shifting, and conduct charged as indecent exposure last year might not hold up the same way today.

The Bottom Line

“Lewd” is not just a word anymore; it is a legal standard with real edges, and those edges just moved. Whether conduct crosses the line now depends heavily on intent, context, and what a prosecutor can point to as evidence of sexual purpose, not simply whether skin was visible. That makes these cases very fact-specific, and very winnable with the right defense strategy, especially now that exposure alone is legally insufficient for a conviction.

If you are facing an indecent exposure charge, or you are unsure whether something you did could even qualify, talk to North Star Criminal Defense before you say anything else to police.