Charges have been dropped against a man accused of taking photos of women’s “private areas” at the Lincoln Memorial after a judge ruled that he did not do anything illegal and that police did not have a probable cause to investigate him.

Christopher Hunt Cleveland of Springfield was arrested in June 2013 after U.S. Park Police observed him snapping photos of women sitting on the steps of the memorial, according to a search warrant. The officer suspected him of taking “upskirt” shots.

When an officer approached him, Cleveland became nervous and attempted to remove the memory card from the camera, according to a search warrant. Officers detained him after a struggle and found images of women’s buttocks on the camera and hundreds of comparable shots from other outings on a computer in his car.

Cleveland was charged with two counts of attempted voyeurism, among other charges.

But Cleveland’s attorney, Jon Norris, moved to have the evidence in the case thrown out, saying that what Cleveland had done did not meet the legal definition of voyeurism.

The move was opposed by U.S. Attorney Akhi Johnson, who wrote in a filing that “it would be difficult to dispute that women generally have a subjective expectation of privacy against photographs of their private areas while wearing clothing to cover the private area.”

D.C. Superior Court Judge Juliet J. McKenna sided with Cleveland in late August, saying that the women did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such a public place and that they had positioned themselves in ways that made their intimate areas visible to any other passerby.

“There is no evidence Mr. Cleveland positioned his camera in any way or employed photographic techniques or illumination, so as to capture images that were not already on public display,” McKenna wrote in her ruling.

Further, McKenna said that police did not have probable cause to stop Cleveland and search his camera since what he was doing was legal and officers were not acting on a complaint from the public.

Johnson moved to drop the charges Sept. 29. Cleveland and his attorney could not be reached to comment Thursday evening. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District declined to comment on the case.

In her motion to suppress the evidence, McKenna said that despite Cleveland having done nothing illegal, his conduct was still “repellent and disturbing.” The story was first reported Thursday by WJLA (Channel 7).