PHOENIX — Federal prosecutors this week filed a formal notice of retrial in a Phoenix federal court, seeking to retry former Backpage.com co-owner Michael Lacey, two months after they failed in their second attempt to convict the veteran Arizona publisher of the overwhelming majority of charges against him relating to third-party posts on the shuttered classifieds website.
As XBIZ reported, in November the jury in the first federal retrial of the Backpage case — which followed an earlier attempt that ended in a mistrial — deadlocked on prostitution-related charges against Lacey, though it found him guilty on one count of international concealment money laundering related to the operation of Backpage.
“One count of a hundred,” Lacey’s attorney, Paul Cambria, told XBIZ shortly after the verdict was returned. “We have a very good basis to have it vacated, however.”
This week’s filing in Phoenix was in compliance with a deadline set by U.S. Judge Diane Humetewa, the Associated Press reported.
The filing reflects the Department of Justice’s steadfast refusal to abide by the November verdict, which appeared to conclude a protracted years-long process that included questionable seizure of defendants’ assets, controversial strategies by federal prosecutors, judges with apparent conflicts of interest, a mistrial and the July suicide of Lacey’s business partner and co-defendant, Jim Larkin, days before the scheduled beginning of the retrial.
The defendants were charged with 50 counts of violating the Travel Act — dealing with “interstate and foreign travel or transportation in aid of racketeering enterprises” — for publishing ads for escorts, dating and massage that ran on Backpage, as well as one count of conspiracy to violate the Mann Act, an anti-sex-work law from 1911 also known by the racist name of the “White-Slave Traffic Act.” Lacey and two of the execs also faced additional money laundering and conspiracy charges.
The retrial jury found two former Backpage executives, Scott Spear and John “Jed” Brunst, guilty of “using the website to facilitate prostitution,” the Arizona Republic noted at the time. “The jury also found the two guilty of some financial crimes, but not guilty of others.” Former Backpage execs Joy Vaught and Andrew Padilla were found not guilty.
Government Lawyers 'Determined to Get Backpage'
Two prominent sex worker rights advocacy groups, the Erotic Service Providers Legal, Education and Research Project (ESPLERP) and the Rhode Island chapter of Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (COYOTE RI), lambasted the verdict in the federal Backpage.com trial and called for full decriminalization of sex work.
“After six years and two trials, Michael Lacey, a founder of Backpage.com, was convicted on a single count of money laundering and acquitted on another,” the groups’ statement read. “An Arizona jury deadlocked on 84 other counts against him in a case that alleged he participated in a scheme to sell sex ads.”
ESPLERP’s Maxine Doogan called the prosecution of Backpage “a textbook example of a false narrative.”
Doogan questioned the government’s claims that Backpage’s adult sections encouraged human and/or sex trafficking.
“It’s all a sham,” Doogan said. “The owners of Backpage are not charged with trafficking. They are charged with profiting from prostitution. There isn’t a federal law against prostitution, but they have invented a way to go after the money, using obscure provisions of the Travel Act to apply state-level criminal violations — from Arizona — that cross state lines.”
The groups’ statement alleges that the Department of Justice was “under immense political pressure and determined to get Backpage.”