The offense is indecent exposure, as denounced by Article 526, V.A.P.C.; the punishment, a finе of $100.00.
Sheriff Ivey of Fannin County testified that during the spring of 1959 he had an occasion to talk to appellant and appellant’s wife, at which time he was informed that they were operating a health club on a wooded tract of land which aрpellant owned several miles north of the city of Bonham, that such club consistеd of 52 families who paid $42.00 a year and who came from Dallas and Fort Worth on weekends, played volley ball, pitched horse shoes, and played games in thе nude. He stated that on the Sunday morning charged in the information he and a group оf other officers went to a spot some 100 yards from a group of buildings on appellant’s place, but not on his property, and for two or three hours observеd ten to fifteen people, men, women and children, in the nude as they went abоut their Sunday morning activities around the camp; that they laughed and talked and were in each other’s company. He stated that he returned to Bonham, secured a warrant for appellant’s arrest and executed the same. The sheriff was corroborated by the other witnesses as to what was seen on the Sunday morning in quеstion.
Appellant did not testify or offer any evidence in his own behalf. We will discuss the contentions advanced by counsel in brief and in argument.
He first contends that the cоurt erred in failing to instruct the jury that such exposure “must have been committed either in public or in such close proximity to a public place that such acts could be observed by the public who had business in such
*517
close proximity.” In discussing a prosecution of this same nature, the Supreme Court of this state in Moffitt v. State,
Appellant next contends that the state failed to prove that apрellant “designedly” “exhibited” his person. The fact that he designedly did so is obvious from the fаct that he set himself up in business running a nudist camp at a place where he might reаsonably expect to be and was in fact seen by persons on property not his own, as well as those who were gathered there at the camp. We dо not construe the statute as authorizing anyone to invite a number of people to his home and then exhibit himself to them in the nude with impunity. It is the persons who can and dо see the exhibition rather than the place where the exhibition is made which controls under the statute. These people were not members of his family and were therefore members of “the public.” To hold otherwise would sanction any violation of the law so long as those who participated were members of a club to which they paid a fee to join. The Court of Appeals in Tucker v. State, 28 Tex. App. 541,
Finding the evidence sufficient to sustain the conviction and no reversible error appearing, the judgment is affirmed.